


Might Not

by jeta



Series: The Fix [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bummer, CACW spoilers, Dark Times, Eventual Happy Ending?, F/M, Flip Phone, Gen, I absolutely promise updates, Implied/Referenced Torture, No pairing - Freeform, Possible Character Death, Sad, Steve Rogers Guilt, Substance Abuse, Things Get Worse, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, abtruse, blame but no bashing, fix-it?, medically sketch, sometimes crap metaphors happen and ya just gotta deal, sorting it all out, speedwrite, the whole team needs hugs, therapeutic eventualities, tony stark persecution, woops plot, wow guys i sincerely apologize for the lack of proof-reader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2018-07-10 17:54:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6998572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeta/pseuds/jeta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The timing of the thing was what really got to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Up Against The Wall

It was the timing of it.

  
It was three months later. Same length of time he'd sat in a cave with Yinsen, all those years ago. Same amount of time it had taken him to finally sober up after his parents' funeral. Just at the point when he had finished rehearsing a thousand snarky variations of _this was all your fault, you know_ , right when he had forgotten every damn syllable of his brilliantly acerbic k.o. punch of an opening one-liner, on the evening of his long-awaited, much-needed, fuck-the-world-level massive bender, right when the tequila hit the back of his head and deadened his mind to every thought in the universe, right when he had finally well and truly run out of things he planned to say — just as he was bringing the cool of the bottle to his lips, sending fire and ice down his throat to do epic battle with the hyperactive sugary racehorses in his veins, that was when the phone buzzed.

  
9:00pm, on the dot.

Typical.

Without a moment’s pause, Tony flipped the phone open. His drink slipped in his hands and some of it slopped onto the keyboard in front of him. Lucky thing there was a rag close by. Actually, luck had nothing to do with it, it was a Dum-E thing. Rag was there, Dum-E was there, phone was there.

  
But the words were nowhere to be found.

  
“...Tony?” came a low, rich-timbred voice at the other end of the tinny line.

  
That voice. Dammit.

“Tony? You there?”

His pulse was racing, he observed, some part of him rather proud of his current detachment. No scientist wanted data that was skewed by emotion. That was his job, right? Since Bruce wasn't around, he'd have to sub in. He needed to be the cold, calculating scientist here: Was he nervous, excited, anxious? Was it anger? Elation? Guilt? Rage?

  
_…Impossible to say_ , he concluded scientifically.

 

Wait a second. Did Tony Stark, the Tony Stark, just give up on a toughie? Did that make him a bad scientist?

  
The heroin was the problem, most likely …Heroin _always_ made him a bad scientist. Emotionally clueless. And mute, apparently.

  
The voice in the phone tried again, plagued by uncomfortable, pained-sounding starts and stops, but starting again nonetheless.

“I guess… I guess I’ll just talk, okay? I… I just called to check in. How… How are you?”

Vocal chords still M.I.A., Tony rubbed the flat of one palm into his hairline, scrunching his hair with his grease-stained fingertips. He felt bleary. Almost undead. But that was just the overwork talking, the lack of sleep and schedule and nutrition and that sort of thing. Nothing new.

“Stupid question. Sorry. I mean - I know you’re okay.”

_Okay_? He thought, tracing the label on the bottle with a slightly shaky finger. That’s what it was called? _That_ was the emotion he was feeling right now?

Tony was starting to feel like he should be talking to a real scientist instead of the back of his head, which was going curiously blank. Well, he should probably start by actually  _talking_ again, at some point. But that was the phone's job at the moment.

“I..." said the phone, softer now, so that Tony had to squish it against his ear to get all the words in past the ever-thickening castle walls around the back of his head, his weird, scientific, useless, _gives up on toughies,_  poundinghead.

"I just called because I.. needed… Look - it’s hard for me to ask this of you, but—”

Vocal chords came back online.

“How much do you need?” Tony blurted out, words tumbling over each other as his fingers tapped the sodden keys, words slipping out past those castle walls like liquor from a bottle, cascading out of his mouth and into the receiver of the phone like drops of tequila into the cracks in the veneers of the industrial-style flooring. “I’m settling up the account right now, I mean setting up. Credit Suisse, totally untraceable, nothing to worry about on your end. Give me ten minutes to get around the C.I.A. tracers, and then another two for whatever crap attempt at national security firewalls S.H.I.E.L.D. still has online. Three million gonna be enough? Doesn't matter. I'll make it five. You need tech? What do you need?”

“Woah, no— ”

“What kind of tech do you want, Rogers? It’s all good, you don’t have to tell me where you are or anything, just send me a drop-off thing. Coordinates. Place. Just tell me a place and I’ll drop an arrange-off. Off-drop an arrange.”

“No, Tony-”

Like a barrage of bows and arrows against a medieval fortress, was the stream of  _no Tonys_ and  _wait wait waits._ Tony plowed on. “Arrange a drop off. Drop an arrange-off. You know what I mean. Insofar as anyone ever knows what anyone else really means, I mean, not to go all Noam Chomsky on you, but it's been one of those nights -”

"Tony -"

"For you too, huh? Well, I mean, if it even  _is_ night where you are, not that you have to tell me, clues to your whereabouts being obviously verboten at this time, not that there's even any absolute concept of  _night_ in a strict sense anyway, not to get all Ludwig Wittgenstein on you, but -"

“ _Stark_ ,” the voice said. Now it was no longer the voice but The Voice, the commanding, resolving, resolute, sickening, evil one. “We’re good. We don’t need anything here.”

“That’s…”

Damn. He’d been hoping for Rogers to set him up for some kind of - _what_ was it he was always being excoriated for by his moral superiors? Snappy one-liners, wasn’t it? But he couldn't work with that. Tony felt the castle walls in his head starting to implode, as if on cue. His mouth hung open like a drawbridge for invaders, but if there were fighting words left in him, he didn't know where to find them.

“ _Wait, what? You’re mumbling_.”

  
Oh damn. Some of that internal monologue must have turned into external dialogue.

 

“ _Tony, are you drunk right now_?”

 

“...And a little high,” he shrugged, pushing the words out, out, out with a high-lightened laugh. Damn those overactive vocal chords. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  
“No,” said the voice, sighing a bit, sounding a bit disgusted even as THE VOICE faded out as though it had never been there. Well, the disgust really shouldn’t come as a surprise either. Cap had always hated his self-defeating decisions to pursue recreational imbibement, as Nat had termed —

  
_No_ , Tony reminded himself for the umpteenth time since the whole debacle had ended, three months ago, hastily unraveling the whole thought before it could be seamed together into the memory of that night three years ago when he'd first proven to them his prowess with scotch - it had been in this very room, up top of Stark Tower, the penthouse suite where they hung around, back when they hung around - he could still feel the burn in his throat as he tucked his head back and took in the Roman Temple-worthy arch of Nat's eyebrows, Hawkeye’s incessant snickering, Bruce’s patient shrugs, Thor’s whoop of drunken glee as he knocked a lamp from the table in the hall, Cap’s calm but steadily disapproving smile —

_No, no, no._

Not Cap.

Just Rogers.

Cap was what his close friends and adoring fans called him. And Tony was neither of those.

“I’m working,” Tony announced loudly, even though he wasn’t. “I’m busy.”

Silence. Tony coughed a bit on his own silence. Another sigh on the other end of the line.

“When’s the last time you slept, Tones?”

“Tones is what my friends call me.”

It didn’t slip out, it snapped out. Left a raw abrasion on the back of his throat as it went, too.

“...Right,” said the voice.

A tiny but still too-long pause.

Then the line went dead.

_Pride_ , he realized belatedly. It had been pride he’d felt. Stupid, third-grade pride at not having been the first one to blink. At having refused the hunger to call. Just to check in.

And just as the realization gelled, out went the pride, and in came the embarrassed regret.

He left the flip phone cradled against his cheek for a long time, listening ardently to the dial tone, then the please hang up and dial again, then the black silence. _Would_ he like to make a call? There was no saying. His eyes stayed fixed on the city skyline outside his glass-panelled cell — no, not cell, penthouse — searching for a fire, or a tornado, or an alien invasion. Something or other to distract him from what he wasn’t hearing anymore.

Finally he set the phone down and picked up the Jose Cuervo again.

But first, science. Studying his elbows. Science needed him to study the crook in his arms, above the elbows. Another needle, then another.  He would have to be patient, observant, while waiting for the phone to ring. No, wait - waiting for the results. Of the study. He'd have to be patient.

He killed half the bottle in the meantime.

All was night, all was bliss, all was quiet. Tony had never really known that science could be like this. A hum of steady, dumb waiting, staring at the phone, staring at one's elbow. The taste of something he had had so much he had forgotten what it tasted like. The sound of robotic lights overhead. The sight of black and gold skylines where gods used to fly. Everything quiet... No more words, no more voices... Science was like death, in that death was peaceful. Somewhere past the ramparts, in a roaring red flare, Tony knew he was telling himself a lie -  death was never peaceful, not on those left behind - but the roar was squelched in a last swish of tequila, and the comforting night of the back of his eyelids became the results he'd been waiting for... 

But then the phone buzzed again.

This time he was so startled he dropped the Cuervo.

He had left the phone open. Couldn’t remember when it ended up on the floor, but now, as he performed a feat hitherto unknown to science and stood up, he towered above it. He watched it buzz around on the ground like a dying thing. Ringing. Ringing. Ringing. Like peasants calling in for the favor of the king… Watched the pool of amber liquid stretch tendrils towards the crappy plastic of the flipping flip phone. Watched the light from Dum-E’s headbeam catch on the spilled tequila, reflect in the gold liquid, catch on the red spilling from his foot as he kicked Dum-E back against the wall, reflect on the shard of glass sticking out of his flesh, just above the soul. Sole? Sol?

_My thoughts are a blur,_ Tony thought firmly to himself. He was so observant, for a scientist. He kind of cackled, kind of slipped back down towards his chair, but ended up missing altogether on both counts. He landed with a thump on the non-carpeted floor of his cell. _No_ , _penthouse_ , he told himself. It was definitely a penthouse. He must not be all that observant, then.

He pushed the green button, telling himself he genuinely believed it was the red button. At this point, he was too far gone to tell one way or the other.

“Hey,” said Steve. “Tony.”

His name’s not Steve to you.

“TONY.”

Not anymore.

“TONY!”

“Hi,” Tony said, smiling. “Hi there.”

“Where’s Rhodes?”

“Yes.”

“Christ.”

“Lang — “

_Language_ , their old joke. Tony couldn’t quite finish that one. It broke in his throat and sent sandpaper all up and down the walls. He pressed his free hand into the non-carpet, collecting little broken shards with his palm. He’d need them, to fix the walls. Make them like glass again, smooth.

“Lang is in another room, working on plans for a super secret mission to go get Indian food,” said another voice, one from long ago, before the tequila, before the debacle. One that Tony immediately hated, bright and syrupy as hell. “Wanda is with him, and Sam, and the jungle kitty. So it’s just Steve and Nat and me who can hear you right now.”

Tony gave a long growl, feeling sandpaper being pushed up and down and up and down the walls of his head. No, throat. Both. “ _Me who_?” he asked, just to continue past the sensation of the sandpaper.

“Hawkeye the Handsome,” said the chirpy voice.

“I know no such person.”

“Me neither,” said a girl voice, one that sent a sharp shard of glass straight into his brain. Or possibly that was because there was glass in his hand, and his hand in his hair again. This whole conversation was getting so damn confusing.

“Who the _fuck_ is me neither…?”

“You can drop the crap now, Tony," said the girl. "You’re on speaker phone with the remnants of the original Avengers, you dick, and from what Cap says, it sounds like you’re in trouble. So put Rhodey or Vision on the line, please.”

… _Trouble_?… What the fuck were they talking about? _They_ were the ones in trouble, and _he_ was the one supposed to save them from it. At some point. When something happened, something that he couldn’t remember now. The aliens, maybe, or the brain-washed soviets, maybe, or maybe it was when the bottle got dropped and sent glass into his foot, sending little rivers of red running over the non-carpet, just like the red from where the syringe had stuck, when he had stuck in the syringe, in the crook of his elbow, cradled there like he had cradled the phone…

"Tony."

"Mmhm."

“TONY!”

Girl voice. Natalia. That one was his retired P.A., Natalia. Tony pressed his head against the leg of his desk, wishing he were made of cold steel, like the desk leg was, like she was.

“Tony, stop fucking around and get Iron Patriot on the line."

"Mhm.

"Right now!"

"...Mmhm."

"We have a _situation_.”

Tony’s eyes snapped wide open, and he pulled a piece of glass from his blue-tinted toes, from the side of his foot. If there was a situation, he’d need to be armed. “How bad is it?”

“It’s bad,” the girl voice replied tersely.

“How bad, though?” he choked out.

“It’s bad enough we need to call in back-up,” she said, still tersely.

Tony heaved a long sigh. It had to be aliens, then. She wouldn't need back-up for something as simple as Soviets. Or anything else. She was too good at her job. “...Damn that terse and cryptic Russian spy.”

The chirpy voice started snickering again. “You know you said that out loud, right?”

“Shut up, Clint!” said the girl voice.

Tony groaned, moving the point of the shard of glass slowly along the floor, preparing his tired elbows to perform the kill move he would use on the aliens. Later.

"No,  _now_ ," said the girl.

He snapped. “Dammit, Natalia, I can handle it, dammit!”

“No you can’t. Call. Rhodes. For. Back-up. NOW.”

Tony pushed the glass into the floor, then turned it in his hand, this way and that, reflecting the light with it, making it shine on the pools of red and the gold on the ground. Why call Rhodey for back-up? Rhodey was busy with... Iron Patriot stuff. War Machine stuff. Stuff that nobody in their right mind should have to deal with, let alone a person made of sterling silver, like Rhodes was. Iron Man was the one who should be there. Iron Man could handle anything. That was the whole point of Iron Man.

“...Still with us, Tones? You’re breathing really weird.”

“I don’t want to get Rhodes involved in non-essential missions anymore,” he mumbled. "It's not... fair." He slid his toe into the colors, staining his bluish nail beds, making the red and gold blend into nothing, neither blood nor Cuervo, just nothing. Just spilt milk, quiet like milk, white like milk, white like his coward blood, white like the sugar in his veins and in his head...

“Tony. This mission is important,” she said heartlessly.

“Fine, I’ll call!” he snapped. “If it’ll shut up you.”

“Do you mean shut us up?” said the bird. “Or up shut us?”

“Shut up, Clint!”

“What? He’s funny when he overdoses.”

“He’s always funny,” Tony commented idly, already tapping in the call on his other phone, as a snarky girl voice said No he’s not.

The decent phone, the one that cost more than most people's rent, the one that was safe to keep on his person, the one without any demons in it, only rang once.

“Sup, Tones” said Rhodey.

“Um - ” Tony broke off, massaging his forehead. Why had he called Rhodes, again? That had been the number one rule he’d promised not to break tonight. Rhodey would absolutely, definitely spoil all his phone if he came over. No, he meant fun. Rhodey would spoil all the fun.

“Rhodes, it’s Steve,” said the flip phone in a weird, old voice. “You need to go check on Tony. Bring Naloxene and an AED.”

“I’m on it,” said the fancy phone. The line went dead.

“...Who’s Tony?” Tony asked them a minute later.

“Classified,” said the flip phone. “All part of the mission. Need to know basis only.”

“Shut up, Clint!”

Tony flinched and fell back on his elbows as pain flew past the decrepit castle walls and hit home in the center of his head. They were so damn loud, always had been, always would be. His head had gone hammer-pounding, critical mass, red-headed boiling point, hawk-eye of the storm, lightning star in the shield, mad green scientist. Now was not the time to be hearing voices.

“Feeling really weird now,” he mumbled, observing for posterity. Observant Scientist of Heroine. They could put that on his next award. They all started talking again, ruining his perfect laboratory conditions, as always.

"He needs a doctor, stat."

"...Not gonna be pretty when the press finds out -"

"The press? What about when Pepper finds out?"

"Why isn't Pepper there now?"

Tony groaned. He had tried to growl, but it was definitely a groan. Even he, Mr. Observant Scientist, knew the difference.

"...Just ride it out, Tony. Rhodey’ll be there soon.”

“Rhodes isn’t _here_. He’s on a _mission_ ,” Tony said to the floor. “I need carpet, stat. Dammit. Pretty sure I’ll be sleeping here from now on, and it’ll get damned uncomfortable without -”

“Where the hell is F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”

“She’s the one who should have called us in the first place. He probably disabled her override, sent her offline - means he pre-planned this one - ”

“Can we reach Pepper? She might be closer.”

“Not closer than Iron Patriot’s thrusters -”

“Can you loud assholes please, please shut up, because I have to go,” Tony interrupted calmly, his head now screaming with pain, pulling apart at every seam. He coughed heavily, wishing he could find food in his belly to retch. Vomit’d be a crappy pillow, but at least it’d be a better non-carpet than glass. “So much damn arguing with these guys all the time,” he said to himself, mostly in his head, because at this point his lips were numb and his throat was dead and his vocal chords were _fucking offline because nothing around here ever worked right_. "I have to go do... some science now."

“Tony, wait - “

No. Too busy to wait. Too angry for loud. Too tired for breathing. But down the other end of the line, they never stopped. Tony sent an exhausted glare at the phone as they all started speaking at once.

“He’s not breathing right.”

“No shit, Clint. Stay with us, Tones. Are you still there...? Tony?“

“Christ, Tony, you dick.“

“Tony have to go finish work now!” he finally huffed at them with all the tired venom he could muster.

“ _Stark_."

That voice again. The worst one. The one with poison in it. The sound of it made him remember the smell of it, the Siberian smell, and his stomach convulsed and found the food he’d buried there two or three days ago, or three months ago, it was hard to know just now…

"Just hang in there a little longer."

There. One more convulsion like that and he’d have enough for a full featherbed on the floor of his cell.

“Please, Tony, hang on - ”

No.

No more.

Tony sank back on the non-carpet of glass, blood, vomit, colors, and phones, and flipped the world closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's been forever since I posted to this account. I wrote this last night to spill my tony feelings on the floor of the internet. Yes, it's an overdose, and no, Rhodey probably doesn't make it in time, because that's just how my day went yesterday. I meant to write powerful, in-control Tony, but this is what happened. Sorry for ooc/sloppiness. Read how you want.
> 
> I might continue it or I might leave it here?


	2. First Things First

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warning hella angst ahead aight you have been warned

His head wasn’t just pounding, it was being bombarded by several hundred sledgehammers, one per second, coming from every possible direction. That was what he noticed before he woke up.

What he noticed right after waking was that there was an IV in his arm and a tube up his nose. He could feel strange chemicals in his system, but not the same ones from before. New, mollifying, redemptive ones. Ones that made his insides feel like garbage floating down a sewer of mud and dreck. So, back to standard. He pressed his eyes open, closed, open, closed. Searing pain flew through his brain with each attempt, but he was slowly coming back to himself.

Name: Tony Stark. Occupation: grandly fucking up. Current Location: … Cot. Thin, uncomfortable. Room. Grey walls, weird arches over the two doors. Bad decor, bad lighting. Unpleasant, unidentifiable smell. To his left, IV bag full of god only knew. To his right, James Rhodes. Dressed in scrubs, sitting on second cot, and looking pissed as hell.

“This supposed to be a hospital?” Tony croaked blearily, eyes drifting closed.

“No.”

“Mental institution?”

“No.”

“Tell me I didn’t die and we’re not at Platform 9 and ¾s.”

“No.”

Tony inhaled a long one and forced his eyelids to open so he could crook one eye over at his friend. He couldn’t remember everything just yet, was pretty sure he didn’t want to if he could, but he knew enough about himself to know he had most likely just stuck a piece of dynamite in his jigsaw puzzle of a life, and Rhodes had probably just gotten finished picking up the pieces. “You’re... mad?"

“No,” Rhodey said just as flatly as before. But his wall-staring was intensifying. Tony could tell. He himself had had a lot of opportunity to practice intense, conversation-stopping wall-staring in the past.

“Rhoooodey...?” Tony slowly prompted.

Rhodes finally turned his face so he was looking at Tony full-on. As soon as they locked eyes, Tony remembered the whole thing. Alone in New York. Heroine. Cuervo. Flip phone. Trouble.

“I am not mad,” said Rhodey with precise articulation. “I am livid.”

Tony could roll with that. “And deservedly so - “

Rhodey pushed both hands into his close-cropped hair and blew up. “You are so damn lucky that I can’t _walk_ right now!”

Tony flinched hard, feeling the words like he’d been dealt a physical blow. So it was going to be that kind of an argument. “What the hell, Rhodes?”

“What did I tell you when you came to me after Afghanistan?” Rhodes said, working himself up now. _He should be pacing_ , Tony thought, just as Rhodes began to pretty much pace in place, his upper body tensing and sagging as his voice went very low and hard. “Do you remember? I said _Tony, you need to take time to get your mind right_. Which you didn’t, of course. But I didn’t peace out, even though I could have. And then you got sick, with the palladium poisoning? And I told you again, take time off, which you didn’t. Obviously.”

Tony sighed and closed his eyes again. “Not sure I am gonna choose to see where you’re going with this -” he mumbled, but Rhodes interrupted again.

“What did I say after New York?! When you were freaking out at restaurants and inviting terrorists to your house? When did you ever hear me say that I thought you were good, that you had fixed everything going on with you, that I didn’t want to be bothered with your shit anymore, that you had actually taken plenty of time now to get your goddamn mind right? At what point after Ultron happened did I ever say just suck it up and deal on your own, Tony?”

“Never,” Tony said, frowning slightly. “None.”

“Right.”

“...Right?”

“Right! I _never said that_ , so why the flying fuck would you treat me like I did?”

Tony made himself sit upright. He yanked the IV from his arm and pulled the itchy, disgusting length of tube from his elbow, his nostril, shivering as his memories of doing the exact same thing in Afghanistan all those years ago threatening to break him, pull the strength from every muscle and collapse him in on himself. But he couldn’t do that right now, because Rhodey was there, watching him with that bland if uncomfortable expression Rhodey always had when Tony was doing something that evoked horrified _oh god no’s!_ in most other people. Rhodey was there, and Rhodey was right. He had always been there.

“You have been there for me, Rhodes, like no one else has -”

“Nope,” Rhodey cut him off, shaking his head. “No, not true, you do not get to play that isolation card, because _everyone else_ also tried to save your life just now-”

“Oh, do you mean Pepper, who last I heard was dating one of my closest friends, a guy who I happen to think is second only to you in genuine awesomeness?” Tony interrupted, snarling, sitting full upright even though it made his head stab and his stomach swing. “Or do you mean Happy, who last I heard was taking my ex-girlfriend out to dive bars and helping her finally unwind after years of tension and stress, most of which I caused? Is that your everyone? Or do you mean my team of ass-kicking _Avengers_ , who had not made contact with me for twelve weeks straight, before one of them happened to call, just because he was bored? Do you mean everyone them? Even just to say hey how’s it goin, them? One of whom, last time I saw him, pounded the everliving _shit_ out of me and basically would have had to take my head off if it weren't for -”

Tony broke off. He’d been babbling, as usual. Anger made him into a babbler. It was annoying as hell that Rhodes knew him well enough to call him on it when he accidentally babbled a bit of truth.

“...What do you mean?” asked Rhodes. Same expressionless face, same livid tone, but Tony knew Rhodey had just switched from emotional to rational. Rhodes was just that kind of guy, the kind who could set their personal crap to one side and get the straight answers, and then react emotionally if the situation seemed to call for it. So very mature. So damn predictable.

Breath coming shorter, Tony focused his gaze on the blanket around his knees. He knew his extremities must be trembling by now. It happened every goddamn time he thought back to that night in Siberia. He hid his hands in the thin blanket of the cot, wishing he had pockets in the stupid-looking greenish-gray scrubs they had put him in. Pockets, or sunglasses, or some technological doodad to toy with, anything, really. Just some more natural-looking way of avoiding Rhodey’s icy, inquisitive glare.

Tony hadn’t told him. Hadn’t told Pepper, or Happy, or anybody. There was - well, it wasn’t true there was nothing to tell, but there was nothing to _say_ , really. _Hey, by the way, Steve’s best friend killed my parents. Twenty-five years ago. He was out of control. I’m a stupid dipshit and I tried to beat both of them to a pulp when I found out. Still not over it._ Add in the trademark wry grin to top it off, and wait to stew in his own melodramatic depression while they all tried to figure out what to say, how to comfort him… ? No, he’d thought that through already. He’d get nowhere with that approach. He’d get a pat on the head and a _p_ _oor baby_ and he had no interest in any of that, not anymore. What would it help? And he didn’t deserve it, anyway. He didn’t deserve their worry.

“Tony,” Rhodey repeated, his voice rounder now, but still steely underneath. “What are you talking about?”

Tony swallowed hard… He didn’t deserve all Rhodey’s anger, though, either. At least, he didn’t think he did. But he couldn’t explain that to the man staring evil, raging, totally stoic daggers at him from the other cot. So he gestured at the IV.

“So I OD’ed, so what? I survived, right? Not like it’s the worst thing I’ve ever-”

“Tony what the actual fuck!”

“Stop being so dram-”

“SHUT UP,” Rhodey roared at him. “Good _god_ , shut up.”

Tony sat back, crossing his arms. He could shut up, but he’d be damned if he looked away first. Their eyes locked for somewhere between five seconds and fifty years, Tony couldn’t really tell, but in the end, Rhodey looked away first, turned his hating eyes back to the wall and crossed his arms over his chest as he said, “This was too far, Tony. This was not just over the line, this was way past it. And I’m sorry Tony, but it’s gonna take a long time for me to trust you again. Maybe I never can. You understand?”

Tony nodded, even though he didn’t. Was he having a seizure? His mind, his body, his heart, everything was reeling, sick. His world was sick. His world - minus Rhodey? Like the fulcrum being removed from a seesaw. Like too much centrifugal force. Like a comet burning up right before impact. This was gonna rip him apart. His jaw locked. Everything in his body clenched hard to keep from flying to bits and pieces right here, as a strong voice in his mind screamed _just hold it together, you pathetic shit, don’t lose it here, not in front of him_. What he finally said was a quiet, “Okay.”

Rhodes glanced up and gave him a pitying look, one that Tony had seen before on Pepper’s face, on Bruce’s, even on some occasions, on Steve’s - on Roger’s.

Tony felt his heart fast-forward through the implications. That look there? That look meant _I wish I could love you, but I can’t even respect you_ ; it meant Tony breaking his back on a thousand attempts to measure up and a thousand and one failures, all of which ended in more liquor, or more gambling, or more obsessive technological tinkering. And then more failures. He’d never seen that look on Rhodey’s face before. But it didn’t matter. He recognized it instantly from a childhood’s worth of exposure. He’d never seen Howard Stark look at him without that exact look on his face.

“Dammit, Rhodey,” Tony muttered, running his shaking hands over his face before sticking them back in the blanket, not thinking through what he was saying in the least, but knowing in his gut he couldn’t go down without a fight. With Rogers and them, maybe, but not with Rhodey. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You were right before, and you’re right right now. I’m sorry, Jim. I thought I knew my limits, but I didn’t. Clearly. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I’d promise it won’t ever happen again, but I’m an idiot, and I fuck things up, and it’s just barely possible that bad things will happen again, at which point I might fuck up again.”

Tony clenched his now-unhideable shaking hands and dared one glance over at Rhodey, who was looking awfully preoccupied with his own hands. There was a long, ugly silence. Tony broke first. He begged, “Please give me another chance anyway.”

Rhodes didn’t look up from his palms, which were so interesting, they were making concerned wrinkles spread over his forehead.

But at last he mumbled, “I know I’m right right now.”

Tony exhaled, relief flooding through him, like the tide over rocks. “And now I know you know you’re right right now. Okay, so at least we’re still talking. No more imperious silence, please, not from James Chatty Cathy Rhodes. They call you that behind your back, you know.”

“I know you know they don’t,” Rhodes replied, shaking his head, almost hiding the tiniest trace of a smile. “Dumbass. Heads up for next time you go on a suicidal bender, not that there will be a next time, the very least you can do is invite me. We’ll go to a dive bar.”

“Duly noted,” Tony said, basking in the feeling of the beginning of his first genuine smile in a long time as he finally turned his attention to their surroundings again. Ugly-ass walls, CCTV cams in one corner, and a somewhat disturbing lack of nurses intruding to check about the yanking of tubes from earlier on… Current location probably not a hospital, then. “So on a scale of FUBAR to STARK, how fucked up are we right now?”

“Oh, we are well past FUBAR,” Rhodey said, smile immediately sliding from his face.

That was when the door on the far side of the room swung open.

“Yep, you’ve definitely entered STARK-only levels of totally fucked,” said a bold voice from the hall, a voice that made Tony’s skin crawl, a voice from his recurring nightmares, a voice that invited an amorphous fear to roll out from the shadows of Tony’s worst memories and take shape in the smile spreading across that horribly familiar, should-be-dead face.

The man with the face entered the room. The door swung closed behind Obadiah Stane.

“Welcome to hell, Tony Stark. Hope you enjoy your stay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know who all is awesome?   
> All y'alls who left comments and kudos on the last chapter! Thanks guys. I went back and proofed most of the dumb grammar and crap transitions on the first chapter, so I hope it reads a little better now.
> 
> This fic is either gonna be some next-level plot-heavy long-ass civil war fix-it fic, or else just your basic cliffhanger ending. I think I know where I'm going with this, but no guarantees...


	3. Needed Me

 

“What do you mean, he never made it to the hospital?” Pepper said very loudly.

“Corner booth, please,” Steve Rogers said very quietly to the hostess, who was already looking from Pepper to Steve back to Pepper back to Steve. She wasn’t the only one, unfortunately.

They had met in one of Pepper’s favorite spots on the Upper West Side, a place off Amsterdam and 83rd that had featured prominently in one of her favorite Meg Ryan movies, back when she was naive enough to believe in things like Meg Ryan movies. It was 10:45am, a beautiful 73 degrees outside, slight breeze, very temperate weather for the middle of Pepper’s favorite month, July. Pepper ran through this litany of basic facts in her head several times, trying to keep her heart from racing and her palms from sweating. She knew from experience that It would be no good, in the end, but it might slightly delay the inevitable.

Steve had asked for the meeting, for some mysterious, most-likely-Tony-related reason that Pepper had been dreading finding out. She had been right to dread, she realized now.

Not that she wanted the rest of New York City to know that just yet. She peered around at the assembled, trying-to-play-it-cool gawkers. None of them mattered, or not yet. Facts mattered first. Pepper turned her focus back to Steve, still very aware of the fact she was speaking too loud, and unable to do anything to alter that fact.

“I’m sorry, but I need you to spell this out for me in careful detail, and I need you to do it now.”

“Here’s not good. Too many eyes,” Steve said softly.

Pepper shook herself slightly and put her game face on, turning back to their waitress. “I’m so sorry, I’m late for an appointment. We’d better not sit down, after all,” Pepper told the girl. “I’ll take an apple crumb cheesecake and a chocolate hazelnut pie to go, though.”

“Sure thing,” said the brunette. “Slice of each?”

“Oh no,” she said, her tone rising. “The whole thing, for both,” Pepper pulled a fifty from her wallet, suddenly adrift in the memory of last being here, with Tony, five or six months ago, watching as he nonchalantly slipped a fifty in the tip jar, even after they messed up his disastrously unhealthy order. They used to come here often. She always got the apple crumb. He never ordered the same thing, always got some inordinately complicated, liquor-infused variation on a basic brownie, usually involving several random layers of chocolate and nuts and coffee. Well, that was what he always ordered up until two years ago, when he’d gone cold turkey on alcohol, again. She’d guessed (correctly!) that this latest effort at sobriety wouldn’t last, since it never did, not for long, but she didn’t think he’d cave so hard, all at once, like Steve said he had… God, an _overdose_...

“Pepper,” Steve said gently, taking her hands in his. She looked up. She hadn’t realized she’d been trembling so hard she had nearly torn the fifty dollar bill straight down the middle.

“Yep,” she said, pulling her spine straight and smiling at the waitress as she collected two gigantic boxes. _Keep it together_. “Thank you very much. Keep the change -”

She broke off when she noticed the two cellphones at the next closest table but one, both casually angled towards her face. If Tony were here, he’d flash a peace sign at them and say _take a picture, it’ll last longer - oh wait._ He would be smiling though. Genuinely smiling. He always loved being photographed with her. He said he didn’t care if it was onlookers, paparazzi, security cameras - said it was the only thing that made him feel like coolest billionaire in the world, which he was, getting candid photos taken of himself with a cool drink of water like Ms. Potts… God, if Tony were to see that she’d been photographed with Steve, after their falling out…

_Keep it together, Pepper!_

Steve and the waitress and the rest of the cafe and what felt like the entirety of New York watched silently for fourteen or fifteen of eternity’s most painful seconds as Pepper struggled to place both cake boxes in her Birkin, then Steve intervened.

“Let me. Thanks again.”

They hustled down the steps of the cafe. Steve immediately led her east, holding the cakes in one elbow and her hand in the other.

“Jacob’s Pickles,” Pepper managed, “One block up.”

“Corner booth, please,” Steve said to a new hostess two minutes later. Thankfully, this time his baseball cap and shades and Pepper’s general squished demeanor must have kept them from being immediately recognized; that, or the patrons of the pub that morning were a little more New York blase about their celebrity sightings. Pepper sank gratefully into the seat at the very back table.

“Please explain what’s going on,” she said to Steve after three very controlled breaths, once she was sure her voice was steady.

“There’s not much to know yet,” Steve said as their waiter arrived with two much-needed ice waters. Instead of continuing, which Pepper very much needed him to do soon, he took a long drink from his cup, ignoring the straw - _Tony always, always uses his straw, such a dweeb_ \- and pulled his sunglasses off so he could look her in the eyes. Pepper appreciated the gesture, but the intensity in his blue eyes discomfited her for several reasons, none of which she cared to examine at the moment. She ran her thumbs over her manicured fingernails and waited for him to continue. He took another drink, then said,

“He overdosed last night, we know that much.”

“I do too," Pepper said hurriedly, and sweetly, as she'd trained herself to do. "Because you told me about ten minutes ago, and I'm still kinda of panicky, if you hadn't noticed. Little bit faster, please, with the sharing of basic information about my boyfriend's vitals--”

_Ex-boyfriend, Pep--_

“The last I spoke to him was around 11:30 last night," Steve said quietly, his eyes distant. "We - we talked on the phone briefly, but I... felt something was off. I had Rhodes fly over to check on him. But… we lost contact with them both." Steve paused for a long, painfully long moment, his eyes on the tabletop, then added, "Nat - Widow - has had her cyber eyes on every hospital in the vicinity. No one came in with Tony’s stats last night.”

“You thought I might know where he is?” Pepper asked.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “But I wanted you to know as soon as possible that... that something was wrong.”

“With Tony, something is _always_ wrong,” she said, almost to herself, with no small amount of bitterness. But Pepper stopped herself before she could unleash _that_ particular train on Steve, who she now looked at, confused. “You came here just to tell me that?” She glanced around anxiously. “I appreciate the gesture, but aren’t you supposed to be in hiding? It’s dangerous for you. especially here. You could have left a message.”

“It’s… not quite that simple.” Steve lowered his voice to the point that Pepper had to crane her neck forward to hear every word, his voice carrying a pleading edge she'd never heard there before. “Widow knows more about it than I do, because she still has access codes that she can use to get into F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s database remotely, when she needs to. Natasha tried to go in last night, right after we sent Rhodes over to pick him up and fly him to a hospital. But F.R.I.D.A.Y. didn't just lock Widow out. Nat says F.R.I.D.A.Y. is  _down_. Her memory cleared and her protocols wiped like the Avengers never existed."

"Hm," Pepper said, because she wasn't able to say anything else just yet.

"Nat's hacking in with Clint's help right now. She got records from the Iron Patriot suit’s information systems from right _after_ he confirmed that he’d arrived, but...”

“But he and Tony never made it to the hospital," she said, forcing her voice to stay deathly even. "But it's possible Rhodes might have just decided not to check in with you? He's still pretty pissed at you, you know.”

“Maybe,” said Steve. “But his suit went completely off radar around midnight, way before he would have arrived at a hospital with Tony. We hope that that was just to throw off any of his government trackers. But - " Steve shifted uncomfortably, and said, "I’m not sure why Rhodes went black again afterwards, unless it wasn’t on purpose. Everyone feels he should have made contact by now.”

“You think someone was jamming him? Or someone is hacking F.R.I.D.A.Y.? Is that even possible, I mean, if you’re not the Black Widow?”

Steve shrugged, looking lost and frustrated. “I have no idea. Hawkeye and Widow think so. I wish I knew enough about it to know what’s likely, or possible, but… ” he shrugged.

“You and me both,” Pepper muttered, looking longingly at the beer on tap at the bar and the spirits lined up along the wall. She definitely needed something to take the edge off, but the thought of drinking anything, less than twelve hours after Tony had done whatever the hell he had done, was kind of obscene… Questions kept flying into her head, impacting with the walls of anxiety in her skull, and breaking apart into unfinished fragments. _Why_ had he… _why_ hadn’t he…   _WHY_ had he had to choose last night to… All the thoughts and questions and worries trailed off into different headings of _No longer your business, Pepper_ , which he’d snapped at her three weeks ago, last time she had tried to touch base with him. Three weeks - she hated that it had been three whole weeks, but they had both agreed, it was best not to be too much in contact with each other, not that they didn’t both keep open tabs on whatever the other was doing using any and every means of social media-related and high-tech spying available to them both. Like children. Like technologically gifted, expensively-endowed children.

Intertwined, her mother had said. _You are intertwined with this man-child, and it’ll do you no good in the long run…_ Pepper had always hated her mother’s unsolicited advisory comments, mostly because her mother was almost never wrong.

“Steve,” she said, aware that she was shaking again, but also aware that it would be no good to fight _that_ particular emotional battle just now. “What can I do?”

“Honestly? I’m not sure,” he said, frowning. He seemed to be struggling over every word, and he kept giving her ardent looks, inflected with some emotion that on anyone but Captain America she would have read as _terror_. “We’re waiting on developments. Or I am, anyway. I’m having Nat and Clint do what they do best right now, and I’ve got Sam on standby, ready to be deployed once we’ve got good intel on their location. You know, Pepper, in spite of the whole Accords thing from a few months ago, every one of them would lay down on the - would do whatever they can for him and for Rhodey. He’s - they're - just as much part of the team as anyone else. We’ll find out what happened to them. Don’t worry about that.”

Pepper nodded, not at all comforted, but interested in Steve’s assessment. She wasn’t totally sure she concurred, but she kept nodding anyway.

“But… ?“ she prompted, after he paused too long. He wouldn’t have called to meet with her if he didn’t need something from her, no matter how much of a gentleman he was regarding the delivery of bad news. Whatever it was, it seemed to be making him pretty uncomfortable. She waited for him to find the words, watching him fiddle with the zipper on his jacket, his expression slowly falling from calm to anxious to so, so sad while they sat there in silence.

“Truthfully, I… “ he began. “I don’t know…” He took a breath, blue eyes focused on the tabletop, and then met hers. He cleared his throat and said, “Well, I don’t know _Tony_ . I mean, I _thought_ I knew him, but… I guess, I made some assumptions about him before, assumptions that ended up being wrong. At first, I thought he was - you know, what he pretends to be.” Steve made a vague gesture at the flatscreen tv in the corner opposite, which was broadcasting highlights from a viciously high-scoring European football match. “All style, no substance.”

Pepper nodded, rubbing her forehead. _Everyone thinks that_ , she tried to put into the nod. Not that that made it okay to think that, but nearly everyone did think that. _Because Tony does his best to MAKE them think that_.

Steve drew in a breath and continued, “And then, after a few missions together…  Well, I started to think he was more like his father than he was."

" _Is_ ," Pepper corrected forcefully, making Steve wince and stare at his hands.

 _"_ I... I thought...” he trailed off.

Feeling vulnerable, and cautious, Pepper waited for him to finish, even though she wanted to jump in. She’d never actually talked this much with Steve before. They had been together at Avengers-related hangouts and seen each other in the elevator from time to time at Stark Tower, but they’d never progressed past each other’s prime cordiality. She had been able to joke around a bit with Clint and Sam and Thor, when she saw them, but Captain America was - well, the Captain. He was always so calm and stoic and quiet… Joking seemed inappropriate. But now he looked kind of like how she felt; he looked almost comically vulnerable. From the small contortions going on in his face, mostly between the eyebrows, she was getting an inkling that maybe _Steve_ hadn’t talked this much about something this personal and serious for a long time.

Maybe they could both do with an outlet.

Steve took a breath and eventually continued, again in his very low voice. “The Howard I knew was a bit of a drinker, but he would never go as far as Tony went last night. I didn’t think - I promise, Pepper, I never thought that _Tony_ of all people would go as far as he did, but I think - I wonder if _I_ pushed him to it.”

“You can’t blame yourself - “ Pepper automatically began, but Steve waved her off.

“I do, though,” he said, fixing her with a very targeted look, a very heart-stoppingly earnest, sorrowful look that made her sit up straighter in her chair and lean forward. “I’m not sure he told you everything, but some of what passed between us… I keep thinking, _I should have tried to stop_ -”

“Don’t,” she said even more forcefully. “Don’t do that to yourself, Steve.” Pepper’s thumbs were getting sore from rubbing them on her nails so much, so she took to fraying the leather on her handbag, feeling her stomach roil. “You need to understand… with Tony, it’s… “

She huffed, angry at her own speechlessness. “I mean, I still struggle with this _myself_ , obviously. With Tony, you know what he’s up to, and you try to pretend he’ll be fine, that whatever awful thing you’re imagining happening couldn’t possibly be what’s actually happening, because if it were, it’d be too horrible to think about. But then you wake up, and the bad dreams aren’t dreams. They’re - he’s gone again, getting shot at again, or getting nearly killed by aliens again, whatever. It’s awful. Exhausting. I mean, you know all this. You’re a soldier. But with Tony… he _invites_ it.”

“That’s what I mean,” Steve said, nodding finally. “I never saw Howard get like that. And with Tony, I guess I didn’t know - or I decided not to see, that it could get like that. Do you know what I mean”

“Oh, I know. I understand. It’s not fun, knowing that,” she said, speaking from experience. “Learning that. Because what I found out, after what, more than ten years now? Is that Tony has… _no limits._ And so his problems also have no limits. Which tends to mean that the worst possible thing that could happen to him tends to be the thing that’s already happening to him. That’s just how it is. Which is why…"

“You needed a break,” he finished for her, sounding as sad and regretful about it as she was.

“Yeah.”

They sat silently for a bit. Steve, once again, looked stoic. He drummed his fingertips on his jaw once, and that was it. Pepper kept opening the cake boxes, shifting the cakes slightly in their trays, and closing the boxes, shuffling which was on top. She was still trying to keep her tears in her eyes instead of all over her face. _Guilt_ tears. Everywhere. She was suddenly hugely grateful Steve had shown up to talk in person, even if it was inviting disaster. He had as good as said he was feeling the same nauseatingly sick feeling she had been feeling for the last twenty minutes, since he had delivered the news. Guilt… guilt. Both of them saturated in it, apparently, both unable to say the actual word.

 _Three weeks…_ _three WEEKS since I checked in…_

Guilt…  It was strange, illogical solace, but somehow it was good that Steve was there, with her, feeling it too.

“Hey, so, did you guys want to order anything?” their waiter said from some extremely far away place somewhere above them, at some point. “Or I could come back?”

“Come back -” Pepper instructed him - but her voice broke on the second syllable as she caught sight of the screen behind the waiter’s head. Someone had switched the tv over to a news channel. Her frozen eyes must have made Steve turn around, to stare at the image that had made Pepper’s blood evaporate, her lungs tie up in knots, her brain implode, for two terrible seconds until her _controlled breaths_ system came back online. Judging from Steve’s pained grimace, they were again experiencing the same emotions. Good. So she wasn’t the only one feeling like God was laughing in her face after spitting all over it.

“Speak of the devil,” she croaked out. _Shit, shit, shit,_ her mind screamed as she sank into her seat.

“Well,” Steve said a little too loudly, his chair scraping hard as he stood up a little too quickly, “At least we know where he is now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know with this chapter, I really don't, but I hope y'all find it somewhat enjoyable anyway. Stay tuned, yeah.


	4. Alone Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I don't know where you're going, but_  
>  do you got room for one more troubled soul? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright my friends. Two chapters in two hours? I dunno if this one makes things better or worse, but maybe it’ll clear up a smidgen of the what the hell is happening rn feelings. And by “clear up” I mean “totally enhance and worsen.”  
> Sorry for the errors which I’m sure are there, but delivering exposition is not my strong suit and I am tired of proofing this? sorry you guys i have no idea how to write chronologically :)))))) also sorry not sorry for sloppy mta porn
> 
> AND I just edited the Pepper chapter to make it consistent with this one, hope it reads better now.

Two anxious minutes and seventeen seconds after Steve tucked Pepper and her very expensive cakes into a yellow cab and sent her uptown, he met Natasha on the platform, about to board a nearly empty subway car on the B train heading south. As usual, when he knew Bucky was in trouble, but he didn’t know anything about how bad it was or whether there was anything he could do to fix it, each passing second felt like an asthma attack.

Natasha seemed to understand as much. She gave him a small, sad half-smile as soon as she saw him coming downthe platform stairs. Her disguise was hard, but her expression was soft. They were both dressed for undercover work, meaning Steve was wearing aviators, a Mets cap, and a black tee, while Natasha looked like she’d just stepped off a catwalk, which for all Steve knew, maybe she had. 

It was good to see her. They hadn’t done any Avenging work in over two months, not since the fiasco at the airport, and while Natasha might have been doing some freelance work for her own purposes, nothing she had done had made the news that Steve watched. And he  _ watched _ . It was more difficult than he’d realized it would be, trying to keep track of everyone without the help of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Stark tech. Steve was all for old-fashioned, except in this one area. Which was why he had arranged for them all to meet up again, in Cairo, just last night, after two and a half months apart, in order to discuss best procedures for when and how they would be checking in with each other. T’Challa and Rhodes had both declined the invitation (no surprises there, really), and neither Vision nor Wanda had shown up at all, which was just as well, since Clint and Natasha had spent the whole time arguing, and Sam just kept shrugging, and Scott had asked three times to be excused to use the restroom. And after an hour of this, Steve had felt the lack of Tony’s input so intensely that he’d excused himself to place that call, just to check in, he told himself, and maybe, somehow, to apologize for not inviting him to Cairo in the first place —

_ (“Tones’ is what my friends call me—") _

_ ((“Attacked Bucky Barnes, better known as the Winter Soldier, in broad daylight —”))  _

Steve shook his head to focus on the present. Meaning the redhead in front of him. Whatever Nat did in her tiny amounts of spare time was none of his business, they had both decided, but Steve was awfully curious anyway. It usually took long years of practice for him to keep his eyes off the pleasant distraction posed by her outfit - midriff-bearing tank, skintight leather leggings, skyhigh stiletto heels - but today it hardly registered, even though it usually blew his mind that in downtown New York, these get-ups were what passed for normal these days; anywhere or any time else, and their need to pass under the radar would have been shot.

_ You are a gentleman, Stevie _ , his lost mother’s voice echoed in his head from what felt like a thousand years ago.  _ Always make sure you act like it. _

“They just want a reaction,” Natasha said from the seat next to him, without really moving her mouth. She was angled towards her smartphone, pretending to be absorbed in it, while Steve was pretending to read a book on ancient Greek ethics that had been left on the train before he got there. “Whoever is engineering this, and I think we both agree  _ someone _ is engineering this. There’s no other reason for things to blow up like this, all at once, unless someone is trying to goad us into revealing ourselves.”

“I agree,” Steve said to the paperback. “So what we’ve got to do is stay calm, stay together, and come up with a good plan before taking any action. Together.”

_ Like we should have done three months ago _ . He left the words unspoken, but he was pretty sure Natasha heard them. Her head shot up just slightly and her eyes focused on the empty seat across the aisle.

“Agreed,” she purred, face going back to her phone. “But I think  _ just _ you and I should work out an initial plan. Then we’ll bring in the rest of the crew.”

“Agreed,” Steve said, feeling once again grateful to have found someone like Natasha in this new time and place. Somehow, more than anyone else, they understood each other. He relaxed in that sensation for one half of a second until she added:

“No more running off with Sam then?” she asked, tone laced with irony, but also, Steve thought, perhaps with just a bit of envy. The latter was more cutting, especially when she added, “Or Barnes?”

_ (...So was I...) _

“You always use his last name,” Steve said suddenly. “And no. I won’t.”

“I do that on purpose,” Natasha said, smiling humorlessly. “But I can’t tell you why just yet. We don’t have time, and also, we got a looker at ten o’clock.”

“Let's get on the C. We need to transfer to the 1, 2, or 3 train at 59th anyway.”

“Took the words out of my mouth, Handsome.” Their code word. She left the first car ahead of him five paces, waited without looking like she was waiting, for him to catch up, laced her hand in his, and seamlessly, they entered the next subway car as an enamored, PDA-prone couple. She giggled for the benefit of the slightly more crowded, more oblivious 1 train car as he held her lightly in his arms, both of them swaying to the rhythm of the underground as word slowly spread that this train was headed towards a disaster zone. 

That was life with Natasha Romanov.

“Give me the full rundown from your angle, Honeybunch,” he whispered in her ear, smiling slightly as she flicked his arm playfully. She hated when he picked nicknames for her. It used to make him uncomfortable, too; it seemed too forward, reminded him too much of — “I need to hear the facts.”

She snuggled closer and spoke right in his ear, voice low and inflected with dispassionate sarcasm, as always. That was her shield, Steve knew. Sometimes he thought it was even stronger than his.

_ (That shield belonged to my father—) _

“So Stark goes on a bender last night, starting sometime between 10:30 to 11:00pm. He calls you a few times, and eventually you realized something was wrong, and got us on the phone, and sent Rhodey over to check in.” 

(It had been sheer luck they had all been together last night. The Avengers, legal and illegal, hadn’t hardly shown their face in the world at large in the last few months. Everyone had gone their separate ways after Steve had broken into Ross’s underwater prison to break them out.  _ Call me if you need something _ , they’d all said to each other. Even Sam had flown the coop. Steve had been surprised and a little hurt to lose his company, but Sam had said he needed to check in with his brother and dad in Atlanta. Steve figured Sam was finding ways to keep busy, and Steve himself had barely had time to deal with everything on his own anyway.   
Tony — (‘ _ Tones’ is what my friends call me  _ )  _ —  _ Stark had been the only one out there, not in his suit, but on TV, usually on Capitol Hill, or the United Nations building, always getting pelted with questions about Avengers activities, what really happened back in April, what are you planning to do to fix this, and always repeating his mantra-like lines about the necessity of the Accords, of amending the timeframes and protocols in order to “get everyone on board.” They were lines Steve was pretty sure even  _ Tony _ didn’t believe in, but Tony clung to them anyway, like they would resolve everything. Like his lines could fix Rhodey’s broken spine ( _ Tony had done that, by fixing the Patriot suit for him _ ). Like his lines could find Wanda or Bruce or Thor, and now Vision, all of whom were now ( _ and forever? Maybe F.R.I.D.A.Y. had some way to keep tabs on them? _ ) AWOL. Like his lines could keep Tony’s parents from being murdered by the Winter Soldier twenty-five years ago ( _...This won’t fix anything! _ ).

Like the Sokovia Accords were the only issue dividing them.

_ (I don’t care. He killed my -) _

_ ((“At least twenty-four civilian casualties — “)) _

Steve heard but didn’t correct the factual oversight in Natasha’s recital. Tony hadn’t been the one to initiate the call. But what did it matter now, who called whom?. 

_ (I’m trying to keep you from tearing the —) _

“So Rhodey flies in from Arizona, where he’d been running Iron Patriot drills with the U.S. Army,” Nat continued, unaware that the previous second of Steve’s life had been the worst thus far today. “Rhodes arrives at Stark Tower sometime between 11:45 and midnight. Vision is nowhere on the premises. Not at the Avengers compound either. F.R.I.D.A.Y. says she hasn’t seen him for about two weeks now. But Tony disabled F.R.I.D.A.Y. at around 7:30 pm, so Vision could theoretically have checked in at some point between then and midnight, when Rhodey brought F.R.I.D.A.Y. back online for about three minutes, to transmit his location to us and to log a report of Tony Stark’s death at approximately 11:37pm. Cause of death: heroin overdose.”

In sync, they take a breath. Nat’s fingers have curled ever-so-slightly tighter into Steve’s biceps. Her voice has not shaken, not even once. But Steve knows her well enough to know that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter to her.

“All communications with Rhodes’s suit cease around 11:55. FRIDAY goes offline again at midnight. And then Clint and I arrive at Stark Tower around 3:45am to try to comb through all the crap and figure out what the hell just happened.”

“Okay,” said Steve, struggling to keep it together, and struggling not to let any hint of it show. “And now this. Let me see the video again.”

She beamed at him, just like an enamored girlfriend would, tucking an earbud into each of their ears and drawing back into the privacy of her phone, upon which she’d already saved the video that he and Pepper had seen at the tavern ten minutes ago, where he had been sitting in extreme discomfort, trying to somehow find a way to break the news of Tony’s death to her. 

Nat pressed a button on her phone. 

“ _ Twenty minutes ago, a Stark suit attacked Bucky Barnes, better known as the Winter Soldier, in broad daylight, here in Times Square just outside Madame Tussaud’s,”  _ said the way-too-chirpily-concerned news-reporter, “ _ The fight resulted in at least twenty-four civilian casualties, including one possible death. Local News 7, CCTV, and a couple of viewer-sent cell phone videos picked up this footage of the incident _ .” 

Incident.  _ Incident.  _ Such a clean word for such a  _ dirty _ event. Steve barely kept the snarl off his face as the video cut to a man in iron armor surrounded by at least three smaller drones in iron armor, all of them flying over the very most touristy heartbeat of New York, a man whose drones were surrounded by civilians on every side, whose drones were using arc reactor pulser cannons and flamethrowers to throw explosions into a crowd of innocent people, trying to get at the man who was inexplicably embedded right in the center of the mess, James Buchanan Barnes, The man in the iron armor flew through the crowd, obviously trying to rip Bucky into several different pieces. People darted in every direction, Bucky included. Steve knew Bucky, knew his fight style. Bucky held his own, but he was all evasion, just as he had been in Siberia all those months ago. The man in the suit was the exact opposite. Just as he had been all those months ago.

The video ended with the suit slamming Bucky’s head into the side of a building, hard enough to crack brick and crush skull. The man in the suit flipped his face-shield open in order to yell at the man whose head he was holding in his iron hand, then slammed him into the wall again, then, picking up Bucky’s lifeless body, flew west towards Jersey.

_ “The city has been thrown into absolute panic. Police are on the scene, but the Iron Man drones are still at large and heading towards Lower Manhattan, leaving chaos and destruction in their wake… “ _

Steve turned his face to the window, watching the metallic lights flash by, trying to avoid the haunted expression on the face in the reflection. “How do we stop him, Nat?”

“Are we even sure it’s Tony?” she replied softly. “He was legally dead just last night, you know.”

“I know.”

The news' reporter’s voice came back, from Natasha's phone and from several other phones nearby, as all around them the people on the train were beginning to cotton on to the fact that New York was once again not well, to fret out loud, to wish and curse and wonder why they hadn't taken another train: 

“.. _. has assured us they have many units trying to make sense of this whole situation, of Iron Patriot attacking the Winter Soldier. Everyone has questions right now. Has Tony Stark finally lost his mind? Or is he protecting us from the Winter Soldier? Or is this Ultron all over again? Here to weigh in is Jamul Adams, press secretary for Secretary of State General Thaddeus Ross… _ ” 

As the announcement came overhead that service had been cancelled through Times Square and everyone was to stay on the train and exit safely at Penn Station, a new voice came through Nat's earbud. The voice launched into a barrage of a monologue, delivering information Steve hadn’t heard yet, and wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to have.

“ _ Thanks, Janet. We at Defense want to reassure the nation that Washington is monitoring the situation closely, will be doing everything we can to, to keep everyone as well-informed as possible as this situation develops. The latest word from Langley confirms what has already been speculated, that this suit definitely belongs to Colonel Jim Rhodes, otherwise known as Iron Patriot. We also know it’s one of his newer ones, maybe the newest. It’s got the re-balanced hand and wrist mods, with the thrusters re-built to compensate for the Colonel’s recent, unfortunate paralysis. But the face under the helmet and the voice projected from the helmet belong to Tony Stark. We want to reiterate that this is why we as a nation, as a world, need real protections against these people, legal safeguards against their inexplicable whims and unexplained shifts in mood… I can assure you, that when - and not if, but when, the U.S. armed forces find both these individuals, we will immediately bring them into protective custody… _ “ 

Steve rubbed the bridge of his nose and checked his watch. All in all, about nineteen minutes now since he and Pepper first saw the video on the tv at the tavern, nineteen minutes of pain in his gut at the fact that Bucky was out of cryo, had been for who knew how long, was here in New York, and hadn’t even told him, Steve, ( _ was he coming here to tell me? _ ); nineteen minutes of pretending to plan a plan of attack with Nat and instead just trying to process what in the world his life had become, who was wrong and who was right, nineteen minutes of pitying then hating then exonerating then blaming Tony Stark for the latest mess they’d been thrown into, nineteen minutes of this now all-too-familiar hell. He cringed against Natasha, wondering what she made of his shift (not pausing to wonder if she had sensed it, of course she had, she was very good at her job). To her credit, she took thirty seconds before nuzzling into him like the newly engaged they were pretending to be. She was uncannily good at reading his need for space.

“I’m not sure why, Steve,” she said into his shoulder as the train slid to a stop at 42nd but the doors didn't open. “I’m not sure how Tony’s not in a coma right now, or how Barnes was here in New York at all, since last you and I both heard, he was in Wakanda in cryo. Correct?” 

“Yeah,” Steve said, pushing through the jittery crowd to force the doors open himself. “And this is our stop.”

“One last item of interest you two lovebirds might want to factor in before you, uh, get off,” said a voice from the platform, a very familiar and welcome voice, from a black man wearing a Mets cap, aviators, and a wry grin.

“Let’s hear it, Lovebird,” Natasha said, clearly unsurprised at Sam’s sudden appearance.

The grin slipped from Sam’s face as he fell into stride next to them. “That CCTV clip didn’t pick up the exact sounds from the fight. No one was close enough to catch it on their phones, thank God, but there’s a part where the audio for the pulser blasts and gunfire match what’s happening, but the audio to the voices does not. Don’t worry, though, I already put my best lip-reader on the job.”

“Clint?”

“The one and only,” said the man himself from a few paces away, having been keeping pace with them for the last thirty seconds. 

“Not the only pair of lovebirds at this station, are we?” Natasha said as she and Steve exchanged what might between them add up to a quarter of a grin. Steve had seen Clint lounging against a newspaper stand when they exited the train, but had hoped Clint might follow at a distance. They were bound to attract attention, as a set. 

But then, maybe that was for the best. Twenty-one minutes had passed, but at least Steve hadn’t felt the last forty seconds physically hurt his chest, not since Sam had joined them. Steve only needed half a second to reflect on how enormously glad he was to have them there, Sam and Clint and Nat. Even if he _had_ just seen them twelve hours ago, halfway around the world. That hadn't been a set; that had just been individual people with differing opinions. This time, it reminded him of the last time he'd strode into battle in downtown New York, sandwiched between Natasha and Clint. As they bounded up the subway steps towards the panicked screams of the world above, Steve said a silent prayer that this time, like last time, it would be the set and not the individual members that delivered the final result, that he wasn’t about to lead his set into another ugly, Siberian fiasco, and then asked, 

“So what is the man in the suit saying  _ instead _ of what someone wants everyone to think they’re saying?”

Sam winced and didn’t answer, so Clint spoke.

“Bucky was basically pleading for a no-contest,” he said to Steve. “He was surrendering.”

“And Tony?” said Steve as his heart lodged in his throat.

This time Clint winced, and, voice dark, Sam spoke.

“Tony was reciting the Winter Soldier activation code.”

Twenty-one minutes and forty-two seconds, and all of them absolute hell. 

Steve sped up, and everyone else followed suit. 


	5. Thunderstruck

Sam Wilson was confused. 

Usually he was good to just roll with events as they occurred, but sometimes they all occurred in such a crazy, mixed-up, nonsensical fashion, that he couldn’t help but sit back in the burnt-orange leather armchair in the sitting room of the penthouse of Stark Tower, frowning at the bandage on his left forearm, the cut underneath which was still stinging like hell even though it had been nearly twenty hours since he’d acquired it in their street brawl with half a dozen Stark Bots in Times Square, and soak in his own confusion.

“Play it back one more time,” Steve instructed the A.I., causing at least three groans, and a too-familiar video to flick on over the 90-inch widescreen.

Bucky. Tony. Bam. Smash. Boom. 

Sam shook his head and looked away, dimly wishing he could appreciate the splendour of the five AM sunrise bathing the city outside the windows with roseate gold light, wishing even more that he could make some coffee right now. He was pretty sure it would just cause everyone more anxiety. 

Clint was rubbing his temples, wearing sweats and an AC/DC tee shirt, still looking a little grey-faced and a lot cranky. He’d been so nauseated yesterday after the fight, Natasha had refused to let him sleep, just in case the “teeny tiny goose egg, like from a developmentally impaired goose” on the side of his head turned out to be a concussion. Natasha was wearing one of Pepper’s silk robes, nursing a cup of green tea, looking pristine as always.

Steve looked like Steve.

None of them had slept, Sam was pretty sure, although they had spent the last six hours trying. After the fight, they had spent about ten hours  trying to work out just what the hell was going on, where everyone was, and what was to be done, before throwing in the towel and just trying to find somewhere private enough to shake off any potential trackers as every news outlet in the city tried to reach the Avengers, or ex-Avengers, for comment. They had finally let themselves into Stark Tower yesterday around 11pm, on Pepper Pott’s “I refuse to take no for an answer, you guys are still his friends and if he were here I know he’d let you in, and besides, I’m sure you have plenty to investigate and discuss and I don’t think you think you should do that anywhere but in the home-base, where you can’t be overheard” instructions. Sam was glad she’d issued them. They had all been plenty shaken up after the fight. It was bad, fighting in public, but it was even worse when you were fighting super-powered suits that looked like your teammate.

Ex-teammate. 

Yeah. It was confusing.

“So then they fly off westward — “ Steve said restlessly, narrating the events unfolding on the screen.

“Just like they did last time we watched this clip,” FRIDAY replied sarcastically. “And the last dozen times, too, for that matter. They flew only a few blocks away, then both get into a waiting taxi. F.R.I.D.A.Y. lost the cab in the Lincoln Tunnel. Presumably they exited using a service route, or more likely switched vehicles.”

“But you’re sure it wasn’t Tony in the suit?” Steve asked.

If F.R.I.D.A.Y. could have rolled her eyes, Sam thought, she probably would have in the pause between his question and her answer.

“For sure,” she replied.

“Hey, it was  _ his  _ face, and his voice,” Sam defended, sitting forward. “I think it’s a fair assumption.”

Her reply sounded like she was rolling her non-existent eyes again: “It was clearly a facial net, like the one that played an integral part in your mission to break into S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters three years ago. Voice capture for the rest. The Iron Patriot suit was stolen, not the first time, might I add. Two options: it was somehow recovered and reconstituted by the government after the Extremis fiasco a few years back, when the Boss blew up all his suits. I heard a rumor a few agents managed to salvage some of the parts. Or else they just waltzed in and took it after Rhodes arrived two nights ago… “

“Seriously, FRIDAY, how could you have lost  _ all  _ data from last night?” said Clint disgustedly. “And where the hell is Vision right now?”

“Good question,” replied F.R.I.D.A.Y cryptically.

“...What, and that’s all you’re gonna give us?” Sam asked the ceiling.

Steve cleared his throat. “So what we need to do is — “

“Have someone talk to Ross,” Natasha said over him. “If we don’t get out there ahead of this, then Ross is going to have Tony arrested, or worse — ”

“Wow,” said Clint, throwing his head into the back of his armchair. “Nat. The fact that you can possibly think we’re in any way  _ ahead _ of this.”

“He’s right,” Steve said, crossing his arms and bowing his own head. “I don’t think we stand any kind of chance mitigating damage with Ross or the government.”

“I know that,” Natasha replied, sounding annoyed. “But you’re forgetting the value in looking like we’ve tried.” 

“I’m sorry, I’m still so confused right now,” Sam said, raising both hands in the air to interrupt what he was certain was about to become another round of Clint and Natasha’s rapid-fire bickering.

“Still?” Natasha shot at him snottily.

“Yeah,  _ still _ ,” he said firmly. “Last night, not even, what, thirty-six hours ago, we were all in Cairo, freaking out because apparently Stark doesn’t know he can’t handle his liquor, and now he’s out running the streets, in James Rhodes’ suit, healthy and hale and sending automated robots to murder us?”

“Facial net,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. reminded him.

“Unconfirmed, no offense,” Sam said. Clint pointed at him in support,

“He’s right, FRIDAY. You were severely compromised not that long ago. I don’t think even  _ you  _ should trust your own data analysis.”

F.R.I.D.A.Y. stayed silent, for once. Probably pouting, Sam thought. 

“To be fair, those drones were probably intended for Bucky alone,” Steve said, eyebrows contracting. “Stark didn’t know we would show up.”

“Or  _ did _ he?” said Clint in a conspiracy-theory voice.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “You’re saying he engineered his own systems hack in order to spook us out of hiding, just so he could attack us in the middle of hundreds of civilians?”

“Hey, you know him better than I do,” said Clint, shrugging violently. “I’m pretty sure I don’t know the stupid fucker at all.”

“Don’t call him that,” Steve said softly, folding his arms over his chest. “And don’t say that. In spite of all that’s happened, we still know who he  _ was _ .”

“No, actually, you  don’t,” said Natasha smoothly. “Clint’s right. I’m sorry, Steve, but none of you ever understood him. Not like I do. Not really. I’ve known him longest of all of us, and I know how he gets when he needs attention.”

“Self-indulgent?” supplied Clint.

“Heroic. And self-indulgent. He likes grand statements and he’s got dramatic flair.  But he’s not the type to endanger innocent lives. Anymore.”

“See, that’s where I’m not sure you’re reading him in an unbiased way,” Clint interrupted. “We can’t assume that the amount of power he has won’t end up backfiring on him,  _ and _ on us —”

“Like with Ultron?”

“Or the Accords. When he thinks he’s in the right, he’s impossible to negotiate with, never mind slow down. He’ll steamroll everyone.”

“That’s…” Natasha trailed off, then looked away, licking her teeth.

“You actually haven’t known him the longest,” said the accented, know-it-all voice of the A.I., making all of them, even Natasha, jump. “Jarvis did. If you want to get to the bottom of this, maybe you should ask  _ him _ .”

“Interesting suggestion,” Steve commented before the others could reply. “But Jarvis is gone. Vision is AWOL. Rhodes is gone, and no one has heard from Wanda in a while either. The way I see it, what we’ve got to find out is who we’re dealing with, here, a hero who thinks he’s a villain, or a villain who thinks he’s a hero. Both options are probably equally dangerous. But figuring out which Tony we’re dealing with will help us either shorten or lengthen our list of hostages to recover.”

Before anyone could say anything to that, Natasha slammed her mug on the tabletop. “This again, Steve?” 

“Natasha —” 

“Look, I really hate to say it, but we  _ can’t _ include Barnes on your hostage list this time. With video evidence of the Soldier Code being used on him, we need to assume Barnes is working against us.”

“Actually,” Sam spoke up, eager to contribute some positive information. “We don’t. I think Bucky came here to New York to find  _ him _ \- you, Steve,” Sam said, noting the latest constriction in Steve’s face that the delivery of this news made. “About three weeks ago, T’Challa and Wanda and I resurrected him from Cryo.” 

Steve looked stricken. Natasha and Clint both looked alarmed. “ _ Why _ ?”

With all their faces turned on him, Sam wanted to retract some of his earlier eagerness, but he pressed on. “Wanda had an idea. She said since she’s had good results using her weird voodoo mind control to implant false memories in people’s heads, she thought maybe she could extract Buck’s Soldier programming, take it out of his brain completely.”

“Did it work?” said Natasha forcefully.

Sam lined up his fingertips and shrugged. “Yes and no. The memories are still there. But the programming coded to that red book the psycho-doctor in Berlin had? That isn’t live anymore. What she did was just go back in and replace the words that trigger the programming with a new set of code words, all of them Wakandan this time. That part was T’Challa’s idea. Pretty clever, I thought. Obviously we have no way to road-test the theory, but he and Wanda were pretty sure it’d work. Keep Bucky clear of Hydra’s hands, anyway. Hopefully.”

“What was your contribution?” asked Natasha.

“Emotional support,” Sam shrugged. 

‘Up top,” Clint said, and Sam high-fived him. “Having been the one in the brainwashed chair, I can tell you that’s not an unimportant job.” 

“But how...  _ confidential _ were you?” she pressed. 

“Well, only me and T’Challa and Wanda, and now you and Clint and Steve —” Sam broke off and nodded at the ceiling, “and also F.R.I.D.A.Y. know he’s been in and out of cryo. He and Wanda are the only ones who know the specific code words.”

Natasha nodded gravely, her lips pursed. Steve rubbed at his forehead tiredly, staying quiet. Sam suddenly felt a good deal of guilt rush through him.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” said Sam carefully. “I shoulda ran it by you, but you were out of contact, and so T’Challa approached me because he knew where I was.”

“And you and Barnes are now so tight you’re on a first name basis?” Natasha interjected sardonically.

“We ain’t tight, exactly,” said Sam. “But we straight. He’s… he reminds me of you, Steve. And not just in that old-guy-with-no-fashion-sense kind of way.”

“But what was he doing  _ here _ ?” Steve said worriedly, leaning against the back of the long couch and keeping his face pointed towards the window, away from Sam. Sam looked at his fingertips, tapping them against each other. He should have known Steve would be hurt. 

“He said he wanted to try and make things right, somehow. Or make them a little better anyway.”

“With whom?”

“He didn’t say. But he said New York was the place to start.”

Steve sighed and turned his gaze to the high ceiling. His face still looked tense. “I should have been there. I should have thought of — of asking Wanda to help.”

“You were busy, Steve. Rescuing your friends from an underwater prison, and then… well, whatever else you’ve been doing.”

There was another pause. Clint was leaning back so far in his chair, Sam was pretty sure he had fallen asleep. Natasha looked calm and unperturbed, which Sam knew from experience meant she was doing all sorts of mental calculations he’d never in his wildest dreams want to be able to follow. Steve looked kinda bad. He looked how he had looked at about the halfway mark of the handful VA meetings Sam had brought him to. A haunted look, that’s what it was.

Then Steve’s phone rang, splitting the silence.

“The fuck?” Sam said, half-smiling as Steve pulled a fossil from his pocket. “My friend, is that a flip-phone?” He looked over at Clint for a shared laugh, but Clint hadn’t reacted at all except to release a slight snore. Asleep, then.

“It’s shaking,” Steve said, looking at the phone with real concern.

“It’s vibrating,” Natasha corrected him. “It does that. Answer it.”

Steve pulled the phone up, then shot a look at Natasha that if Sam had seen on anyone else, he would have called  _ frightened _ . 

“What if it’s Tony?” he nearly whispered.

“That’s why I have this,” Natasha said, pulling a bobby pin from her hair. “Recording device. If we need it.”

“Let’s go, talk to him,” urged Sam, feeling hopeful that at last some of this confusion would be cleared away. “He’s got plenty of ‘splaining to do.”

Steve stared at the phone for another buzz, then finally straightened up and opened it. Natasha leaned over to place one delicate finger on the speaker-phone button. Sam leaned in, all three of them barely breathing as a voice on the other side said,

“...Yo.”

Steve looked a variety of emotions at once - relieved, panicked, worried, stressed, angry. Sam was feeling some splintered version of most of those, himself.

“...Hello?” Steve finally said. “Tony?”

“Yeah, it’s me. What’s good, Steve?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO I'm out of town the next few days and won't be able to post. Sorry....! Might try to tack on another chapter tonight depending how much time I have.


	6. If You Want Blood (You've Got It)

“It’s me,” Tony said, checking his wrist for his watch, which of course he wasn’t wearing. Damn. Less than half a second into this conversation, and he already had no idea what to say, so he took a cue from Nicki and Miley, using his gut to find the name he’d use to inflict the most pain on the stranger on the other end of the line. “What’s good, Steve?”

“It’s me, too,” came the all-too-even reply. “Tony, where are you? We’ve been… “

“What?” Tony spat, frowning morosely and smiling ironically at the same time, not that it would do Rogers any good to see that, since he would never know, even if he were there in person, the way that mixed emotions got painted into the lines on Tony’s face. “Worried?”

“Confused,” said Rogers.

“Well, yeah,” said Tony, unable to resist. “Like that’s unusual for you.”

“Seriously, Tony, you were dead thirty-six hours ago, according to Rhodes’s Patriot suit.”

“That’s why I’m calling,” Tony interrupted. “He’s been captured, and I don’t know exactly where he is right now, and I’m about to go fuck some people up pretty good, so if you want to save these pigs, go get Rhodey out before I lose my fucking mind, you know?”

“You’re not making sense,” said Rogers. “Who has Rhodes?”

“Gee, Steve, I think it ma-hay be an active Hydra cell, because who else, but since I was born yesterday, I don’t know for sure.”

“Tony, stop being cute,” said Natasha’s voice. 

“Hey, it’s the ugly one!” Tony said chirpily. “I thought you might be listening in. Again.”

“Stop being cute and explain what we need to know in order to get Rhodes to safety. We’ve had a lot of misinformation thrown our way the last few days, including from you, Mr. My Substance Abuse Problem Is Totally Under Control.”

Tony snarled like a beast. Like she was in any position to tell him to stop being cute with information. He waited until he had a good handle on the painful flare of frustration and hatred that had just passed through him, then said, “Look, that’s not why I called. All I want is for you to go get Rhodes.” 

“If you’d been paying attention at all, you might have noticed we’re in a spot of trouble already,” Natasha said back. 

“I know,” Tony sighed, just annoyed now. “I rebooted F.R.I.D.A.Y. remotely. I saw the headlines.  _ Tony Stark to be arrested for violating his own accords.” _ He snorted. “I actually wouldn’t mind, as it would mean I wouldn’t be stuck  _ here _ .”

“Where is ‘here’?” Natasha pressed. Tony ignored her.

“Look, I saw the event in Midtown,” he said tiredly, trying to distract them, rubbing at his forehead. “Just so you know, that wasn’t actually me in the Patriot suit. Seeing as I was still unable to stay vertical yesterday, and spent most of it sleeping off the aftereffects. Nor did I send my drones after you. Someone hacked those. Believe me, if I was out for blood, I’d come in person, in red and gold.”

“Okay,” said Rogers, re-entering the conversation, and sounding uncomfortable, which gave Tony a shot of painful pleasure. “But where are  _ you _ , then?”

Tony scanned his small cell, which was depressingly, decoratively uninspired as the one he’d woken up in the day before. Cot, IV bags and tubes, cctv cameras, and gray walls. The only happy addition was the ancient black computer on the small desk. “Doesn’t matter,” Tony said, returning to tapping at the keyboard they’d given him. “Get Rhodes, please. I’ll send you coordinates when I lock them down. Been nice chatting with—” 

“ _ Where are you _ .”

Tony stopped tapping long enough to roll his eyes and scoff at the flip phone. “...I’m being held in a place by some people,” he finally said.

“You were captured too. How are you calling right now?”

“Honey, remember who you’re talking to. You think I can’t perform an elementary hack like getting ahead of their A/V? Their second mistake was giving me access to a circuit board, the morons.”

“And their first?”

Tony scowled. “They captured James Rhodes. A paralyzed James Rhodes. Like I said, I’m about to go fuck them up, so without further ado — last chance to make a case for me to spare any of their worthless lives.”

“Why would we want to do that?”

Tony drew a deep breath, deciding now was as good a time as any to deploy the bombshell. “Because one of them is your old boyfriend from the war.”

Rogers — or what the hell, he’d always be Steve, and Tony hated,  _ hated  _ that he’d always be Steve — drew in a deep breath as well. “Bucky’s there?”

“They brought him in about twenty minutes ago,” Tony said quietly. It was hell, not knowing where Rhodey was or how he was, or whether there was anything Tony could do to help him. He knew it must be the same for Steve, with Bucky. As much as he hated him, and he did, he  _ hated _ him, he couldn’t bring himself to inflict more of that particular kind of hell on his… his former friend. “They think I don’t know, but like I said, simple hacking skills are one of the tools in my wide arsenal. Which is how I also know that they’ve already started moving Rhodes, which is gonna make it difficult for me to go get him out myself.” 

“Okay,” said Steve, finally getting with Tony’s program. “Where are they moving him to?”

Tony pulled up the reports he’d stolen from his captors, and said, “Strategic analysis reports suggest a warehouse outside the main airport in Nepal. One thing I don’t actually know at the moment is where we  _ are _ right now, so I can’t say for sure how far away said warehouse is from where I am, or how long it’ll be ‘til he gets there, but—”  

“Ok, hang tight, we’ll come get you.”

“You fucking better don’t,” Tony said. “Get Rhodes. I’ll get Barnes.”

“Tony —”

Tony nearly bit through his tongue, he was so annoyed at the condescension in that one use of his name, but he forced his tone to stay calm, saying, “I can put aside things, Steve. You have to trust me. I know he’s acting under programming right now. So I’ll make you a deal. I’ll get Barnes out if you’ll get Rhodes.” He bit his tongue again, and added, “Please.” 

There was an awkward pause. Tony felt the weight of what he’d just so flippantly promised settle into the fuzz of the natty connection. Then finally, someone spoke.

“Tony,” Natasha said softly.

“What.”

“You might be right. But you’ve gotta have lines to give them. If you’re interrogated.”

“Ain’t my first rodeo, Sweet Pea. I know how this works.”

“Yeah, but last time you had Yinsen, and they needed something from you.”

“They might still. They gave me access to a circuit board, may I remind you.”

“But we don’t know what they want. Please trust me back. You need to have  _ lines _ . Don’t just say  _ I don’t know.  _ Give them a few specifics. Dates and times. Things that are easy to repeat, that aren’t lies but aren’t the truth either. Otherwise they’ll force it out.” 

“You’re trying to tell me how to get people to take it easy on me?” Tony asked, thoroughly flabbergasted. “ _ You _ ? Well, of course, you, with your neck on the line as well as everyone else’s, were I to spill any of the information on your whereabouts or activities, information you’ve all carefully avoided giving me. Which, as it happens, they already know I don’t know.”

“They left you the phone, though. So they must want you to contact us.”

“Correctamundo, Babe,” said Tony. “What does  _ that _ tell you?”

“You need to have lies ready.”

“I wouldn’t be calling you if I didn’t. I’m more than capable of feeding them a fake phone conversation, Honey. Again, you gotta trust me at some point to be at least semi-competent in my chosen field of expertise, for which I have received a lifetime’s worth of accolades and awards for my achievements, may I remind you just one more time.”

“Hey, what about the F.R.I.D.A.Y. hack, which apparently happened right under your nose?” Natasha said, and Tony couldn’t fully repress a smile. Anyone else would be melting under his acerbity. Natasha was in many ways his perfect personality match, which was why it still hurt that in the end she had chosen — 

“I’m doing my best to fix it remotely, but I don’t have super-excellent wi-fi at this time,” he muttered. “Not totally sure what the source of the bug was.”

“Sure it wasn’t you?” she said caustically. This time Tony refused the bait.

“Not after, no. Get F.R.I.D.A.Y. to run data analysis.”

“We need to know more before we can figure out if we can rely on F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s data right now,” Natasha said.

“Hm,” said Tony, sarcasm more than evident in just the one syllable. “You know who you could really use to figure that out? A tech genius with a history of developing sentient A.I.s.” 

Natasha was probably rolling her eyes. “Or depending on availability, I know this one kid who lives in Queens.”

“ _ Shhhhhhhh _ ,” Tony hissed. “That one’s top-top-top-secret, Widow. Can’t be too careful with keeping it on the down low. Especially don’t let his aunt know.”

“I’m not a moron,” said Natasha, “like some people.”

The scorn in her voice directed Tony right to whom she was referring. He was in no mood to prolong this already-way-too-heavy conversation, but he forced himself not to bite back the words that spilled out: 

“Dammit, Nat, I’m sorry, okay, is that enough?”

“I don’t know,” she said sweetly. “Depends if you survive this current mess you and your wide arsenal of tricks just made or not.”

Tony snarled again, and then noticed Steve’s visceral growl. “Lay  _ off _ , Natasha,” Steve said, making Tony’s blood curdle with anger. How  _ dare  _ Steve try to get protective of him, Tony, after — 

“Hey,” Tony said, to cut off his own line of thought. “Steve. How did you even know to send Rhodes? The other night.”

“Call it intuition,” Steve said, already ready. Always ready, the fucker.

“I call that horseshit,” Tony hissed. He was always ready too. Fucker. 

Steve paused, then said, “Your breathing was weird.”

“...Oh,” said Tony. “And that was enough? You jumped from ‘weird breathing’ to ‘send help, probable heroin overdose’?”

“Didn’t know what it was. But I knew… I knew it might be…”

_ I knew you _ , a voice supplied in Tony’s head. _ I knew you’d fuck up. I knew you’d be a pathetic mess without all the kings’ men there to put you back together. _

Tony reared back. Who the fuck was this voice??? Sounding just like Obadiah??

_ No. Don’t think about Obadiah right now _ . Especially since despite the A/V hack over the security mainframe, and the constant flick of his eyes over to the screen monitoring the hallway outside his cell, Tony still wasn’t 100% sure Stane wasn’t about to walk through the door at any moment. He shivered. Natasha was right about one thing. This nightmare wasn’t over yet. Not even close.

_ Block it out until you have to deal with it. _

“What?” said the voice in the phone. "Tony?"

“Nothing,” said Tony, his voice shaking slightly, to his immediate distress. He shook his head violently and pressed the phone closer to his ear. “I gotta go, and so do you. Go get Rhodes. I’ll check in if I can. Don’t call.”

“Tony —”

He closed the phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok and with that increase of problems, now i'm out! see you in a week or thereabouts! btw the chapter names are song titles? if that wasn't obvious.


	7. Someone Else

With no plan in his mind and nothing else left to do, Steve paced. 

He walked up and down each hallway of the enormous Stark Tower penthouse, entered and left each room (except the one bedroom where Natasha, Clint, and Sam lay curled up sleeping, all on the same bed, all of them pretending it was because it would save on the utility bill when they washed the sheets later, instead of because they were all of them, every single one of them, afraid to let the others out of their sight, Steve could  _ see _ the fear in their eyes). 

He paced. He paced and roamed for hours, waiting for his phone to ring again, searching for noone and nothing. The phone felt like a thousand-pound weight in his hand. But it was nowhere near as heavy as the emptiness around him.

When he’d first lived here— _ stayed here _ —before, he’d felt the place lacked warmth. The decor was gray, which it always had been, which had always annoyed Steve (All the money in the world, and Stark still chose  _ gray  _ as his home’s signature color…). Outside the darkened windows, the city and the 4am sky were leaden gray, like Stark had chosen the color scheme out there as well. Maybe it was because he hadn’t been able to sleep in about 48 hours, but just in that moment, Steve had the strange impression that everything that had ever come in contact with Tony Stark had gotten lodged somewhere between cold slate and cold gray, everything except those painful, too-exotic flares of red and orange and gold… 

Like the stains on the thin gray carpet surrounding the remains of the liquor bottle on the third floor loft.

Steve had paced past that spot only once. When they’d first arrived, Sam had been the one to pick the glass from the floor and throw it into the garbage disposal and lay a gray cashmere towel over the spot where the stains were. They had all somehow silently decided to pretend the spot was just another Stark quirk to ignore. Part of the always-existing ugly decor.

Back at the start, there had been a lot to pretend to ignore. It had always been Stark this, Stark that. And the original Avengers had been worse about it, even worse than Wanda now — it was like they had all taken it in turns to complain to Steve about it.  _ He’s your responsibility now _ , Director Fury had said with a somewhat-relieved roll of his one dark eye.  _ He’s such spoiled child, _ Natasha would say with an annoyed roll of her long-lashed eyes.  _ He’s gone and blown up the lab again,  _ Hawkeye had once told Steve with a distracted roll of his beady eyes. 

Barton had said that here, in this very hallway where Steve now stood, the one dotted with hideous orange and red abstract paintings… 

Steve remembered that day with Barton. It was maybe two or three months after Loki’s fall, as they waited for another assignment, waited for news from Thor, waited for some sort of global disaster, all of them still unsure what the hell they were doing in the absence of said disasters, unsure whether another assignment would show up at all. Steve remembered hoping one would, and then feeling confused and guilty about that hope.  

He remembered the way the tension in his chest suddenly spiked when Hawkeye had said  _ blown up the lab _ , despite already knowing from Barton’s demeanor that there was no serious trouble. How annoyed Steve had decided he felt, upon realizing he would have to abort his bathroom trip just to make sure no one was injured. The weird way it had felt as his feet pounded down the stairs to Stark’s lab to realize he wasn’t actually worried about injuries. That he was actually worried about missing out on a little excitement.

And the slight disappointment he’d felt when he burst into the lab and found out no one had been injured after all, no one except a couple of near-strangers. He remembered seeing Bruce— _ it was still Dr. Banner, back then— _ Bruce, with a dirty rag pressed to his bleeding hand, as Bruce had given Steve a wry, apologetic, genuinely amused smile instead of the usual eye roll.

A smile which Steve couldn’t help but contrast to the huge, toothy, shit-eating grin on Stark’s face— _ back then, he had always been just Stark—because calling him Tony was somehow too much like calling him Not-Howard, and calling him anything but Stark would be somehow like asking fate for Howard back, and fate had already shown she didn’t give a single damn what Steve asked for— _ Stark had emerged from under a mangled piece of metal, grinning from ear to ear, grinned from underneath clouds of black smoke coming from the malfunctioning ventilator, Stark grinning, fire extinguisher in his hand, spraying Bruce with a stream of pressurized nitrogen while crowing over his imminent victory over said ventilator.  Dr. Banner had actually giggled, and tried to pass it off as a chuckle as he grabbed the nozzle and pointed it right back at Stark, who yelped and danced out of range as Banner tried and failed to wrench the extinguisher out of Stark’s hands.

_ What in the world— _ Steve had said, causing Stark to startle hard and point the extinguisher in Steve’s face, blasting him with cold air.

_ Hands up!  _ Stark had said, like a child.

_ You could have hurt someone— _ Steve had said, feeling like he sounded like another blast of cold air.

_ His fault it was and started it he did!  _ Stark had yelled, pointing at Bruce, turning the extinguisher on full throttle and aiming it at his lab partner. Banner laughed, and swore, and Steve was involuntarily reminded of Bucky, because that was something Buck had always done.

In hindsight, that might have been the moment that  _ Dr. Banner _ had started a slow sliding morph into  _ Bruce _ in Steve’s mind, just as  _ Stark _ had slowly inched closer to  _ Tony _ , and Tony had legitimately, hysterically, uncontrollably giggled at Bruce’s choice of expletive, not bothering in the least to try to disguise it as Banner held the fire extinguisher right up against Stark’s face, 

And Steve had stared at their childish antics, nonplussed. Too curious for an eyeroll. 

Because this swearing, laughing person was not Bucky, nor was he  _ Dr. Banner.  _ This man was Steve’s friend.

And this smaller person Steve’s friend was attacking was no Howard. Howard might smirk and snark like this little man did, but Howard never  _ giggled _ . This giggling, sarcastic, motor-mouthed person was someone else entirely — was Dr. Banner’s friend.

And Steve had felt just a tiny pinprick of  _ jealousy _ about it _. _

_ Relax, Cap _ , Banner had said, waving his bleeding hand nonchalantly in front of Steve’s unblinking eyes _. Not enough pain to induce a visit from— _

_ His inner Yoda,  _ Stark had finished for Banner. 

_ That is the most inept comparison I’ve ever heard—  _

_ Small and green and powerful are you both—  _

_ Oh, “small,” is he now?  _ Banner had said, taking a step forward so he could loom over the shorter Stark, messing his hand in Stark’s already-messy hair.  _ My inner Yoda is “small”?! _

_ Well relative to someone like R-2, no, of course not, but to Jabba or the asteroid dweller or the Rancor, yeah, your other guy is pretty small. I mean, maybe if the Hulk eats a couple truckloads of Twinkies and donuts for the next six months, he could give Jabba a run for his money. Hey, let’s try it—  _

_ Get those out of my face!  _ Banner had bellowed through more laughter as Stark had grabbed a box of packaged pastries from the desk, throwing them at Bruce’s face and blasting the ones that fell with more pressurized air from the extinguisher.  _ Are you TRYING to make me lose it,  _ Banner had half-yelled as Stark hit him with three packaged pastries at once.

_ Do or do not, there is no try—  _ Stark had replied, which Steve had thought was rather profound. Dr. Banner became even more annoyed though, as Stark continued to shower him with pastries and nitrogen.

_ Stark, if you intentionally set me off, I take no responsibility for any injuries I inflict—  _

_ The dark side I sense in you, Banner—  _

_ Dark side is right here, I don’t need my Inner Yoda for that _ , Banner said, finally catching a few pastries and chucking them back at Stark’s head, and using the distraction to yank the fire extinguisher from Stark’s grip.

_ So BORING, you are, my young Padowan!  _  Stark had chattered through his and Bruce’s laughter, as Steve stood there watching, scrambling to figure out what kind of reference he was missing now.  _ You must unlearn what you have learned, Dr. Banner. Give me back that fire extinguisher! _

_ I will when I’m done feeling extremely pissed off at you. _

_ Pissed off leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering, and suffering leads to you going completely green, I believe is the proverb. _

_ That’s not even close! Knock it off!  _ Banner had complained, shielding his face as Stark continued to pelt him with pastries and he, too, started to lose control of his chuckles.

_ Cut that out— _ Steve’s outer self had said, while his inner self had unfortunately decided to join in the uncontrollable chuckle-giggles.  _ Someone might get hurt—  _

That was when Stark had tripped over a cord in an effort to escape Banner’s wrath, ultimately landing on his rear-end on the floor.

_ Exactly right you are,  _ Stark had said, snapping his fingers and pointing one right in Banner’s face as Steve immediately moved to help Stark to his feet, and Stark ignored his help completely.  _ Good work, my young Padowan. You finally wounded me. _

And Bruce had laughed again and rolled his eyes, but not in the usual way. It was in a fond, almost a loving, way.

And Tony had wheeled on Steve.

_ And I mean speaking of fault, Cap, really, seriously, you over-enthusiastic fanboy, you. What were you thinking! HOW you thought it was a good idea to pull that switch just now without the internal pressure snapping the lever off and causing considerable combustion to the VERY flammable gases inside, that was super foreseeable, even for you—  _ Stark had immediately started chiding Steve, in his rolling, muttering, nonsensical monologue, as he bent over the smoking scraps of metal and pulled a handle like a sword-hilt from the wreckage and brandished it at Steve just like Steve’s fourth-grade teacher Ms. Hallowell used to do with her ruler. 

Steve had felt the usual, instinctive snap of anger, had bitten his tongue just before the anger took on verbal form, just as the anger had evaporated in the sudden realization that Stark was kidding with him, Stark was always kidding with him, always inviting everyone to just mess around, and the realization meant that the sting of jealousy evaporated as well.  

The words on the tip of Steve’s tongue, the patronizing  _ “You could have hurt someone,” _ had morphed into  _ How could I? I could have hurt someone. _

And they had both laughed. 

Which had felt good.

Steve had said it perhaps a little too loud, because he was still feeling uncomfortable, feeling like the parent of several seven-year-olds, and part of himself desperately wanted to accept Stark’s unspoken invitation, to allow himself to be just another seven-year-old in a gang of fully-grown, should-know-better- adult seven-year-olds, but another part of himself was still reeling in shock that his inner seven-year-old had survived the War after all. 

Stark had laughed, and Banner had laughed, and then Stark had grimaced at Steve and made a  _ yikes  _ sound as he started pounding at the sword-hilt with a crescent wrench.  _ I mean, sure, I’m with ya, I’m all for hurt, death, and destruction, but I’M not the one who decided it was a good idea to build a lightsaber prototype,  _ he finished, shooting a pointed look at Banner.

Bruce had answered with a huge groan.  _ All I said was ‘hey, wouldn’t it be kinda cool,’ and then YOU jumped all the way to ‘I think I already have a base schematic we can use’-- _

Tony had smirked just like Howard had, and said:  _ And then Steve waltzed in here and said ‘hey, I have a great idea, let’s use that base schematic to ignite several gasses at once and cause no small amount of chaos, which would inevitably lead someone to fall on his ass and get very painfully hurt as a result’— _

(Steve remembered, had savored, could still taste that moment, that first time Tony had used his first name instead of  _ Cap _ , how unexpectedly safe it made Steve feel, and how good it felt when all the other Avengers had eventually followed suit...)

_ Nice try, Tones, but Steve still doesn’t even know what a lightsaber is  _ Banner had said with a shake of his head, throwing that much more sunlight onto Steve’s heart. _ Little logical hole there. _

_ Yeah. Trying to rectify that one right now, _ Tony had said, swinging his now-completed light-sword into the remains of the smoldering metal, and earning himself a shower of sparks and another small fire as the hilt exploded again. Steve jumped out of the line of fire and straight into Bruce with the fire extinguisher.

_ Ow,  _ Bruce had laughed again as Steve apologized for stepping on his feet.  _  I feel like there’s an easier way _ , Bruce had said, blowing more air out from the fire extinguisher.

_ Yep,  _ Tony had said, jumping back from the fire as Steve stamped out the embers.  _ Okay, agreed. The boring way it is, then. Come on, Steve, let Dum-E get it. I’ve got a DVD player and a box-set of Special Editions to introduce you to in the living room. Bruce, bring the Ho-Hos…  _

Steve massaged his forehead until the flashback finally subsided, and found himself no longer pacing, just sitting on the couch in the living room, on the same cushion he’d sat on all that time ago, just right of dead-center in the middle of the couch, as the three of them had watched  _ The Greatest Six Sci-Fi Movies of All Time _ . 

The TV was black now. The memory had played out. The room was empty again, and the phone in his hand was heavy again, and Steve was  _ so tired _ .

What was he supposed to do?

Tony had said it himself—Don’t come. Don’t charge in and save me, because I’m busy saving myself. (as usual, Steve thought, thinking back to Extremis, to Ultron, to Sokovia. Tony never, ever needed anyone’s help, much less accepted it). Tony—no,  _ Stark _ , was off somewhere, in captivity, being held against his will, and according to their phone call,  it was Steve’s job to allow Tony the time and space he needed to save himself.

Steve almost agreed with him.

But that was what Steve had thought during the Accords, and after Siberia. That with time and space, Tony would sort it out for himself. That Steve would never be able to persuade him into anything. It wasn’t in Tony’s nature to be persuaded. But it  _ was  _ in his nature to come to the right conclusion eventually. 

Steve just hadn’t thought that alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and terrorist captivity would be part of the road to that eventually. 

He felt an involuntary shiver run through him.

_ I’m not sure I’m worth it to you _ , Bucky had said. 

There was no answer to that. Bucky was worth it one hundred, one thousand times over, to Steve, because he was  _ Bucky _ . 

But Bucky wasn’t worth even half of all of it to Tony. He wasn't worth the smallest fraction of it to-- 

To Stark.

Or to Banner.

And Steve finally realized he had been deluding himself, thinking that his own personal calculus was the only one that mattered here. 

It was so unfair. Unfair to Bucky, to Stark, to Steve, to the whole team.

Steve growled under his breath, his anger catching up to him again. If only Vision were here, or Nick. They'd know how to handle it, wouldn't they? If only Tony hadn’t lost it, just a few nights ago, here in this penthouse. If only Tony hadn’t lost it a few months ago, out in Siberia. If only Tony hadn’t pressed Steve and everyone else so damn hard and so damn fast, on the Accords… While he was doing if onlys, if only Steve had just died when he'd flown his plane into the ocean, and spared himself a world of trouble... if only Bucky hadn’t been forced into servitude as the Winter Soldier sixty years ago…  If only Rhodes hadn’t fallen to paralysis, and possibly now been captured, held against his will…

So many ifs. If Bucky was indeed being held where Tony was being held, if Tony was actually telling the truth when he said he’d get Bucky out, if Tony could even be trusted to make the right call after his recent episode… 

if Tony would just call back… 

There was no way Steve could sort it all out alone. 

He opened the flip phone, hesitated one moment before tapping in nine memorized numbers and placing the phone to his ear.  It rang and rang and rang, and each ring was a new if. Steve pressed his forehead closer into his hand, hoping he was doing the right thing.  It occurred to him on the final ring that he really wasn’t sure  _ anyone  _ knew what the right thing was anymore.

The line connected.

“...Who is this?” said a voice that sent a jolt of warmth straight through Steve’s shirt.

“It’s Steve,” Steve sighed. “How are you, Bruce?”


	8. Sorry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moved this chapter to where it's actually meant to go :) BEAR with me, lovers, I know it don't make sense yet, but it'll all make sense in the end, probably. I took a few days off from posting to write ahead and pre-plan this puppy, and look, things are gonna get worse and worse for our crew for a little while, and then at the ending, There Will Be A Happy Ending. I hope! Personally I got a little emotionally destroyed by CACW and I just want a little reconciliation somewhere somehow someday and hence this fic. Outlet.
> 
> But it's gonna get worse before it gets better, fair warning. 
> 
> Thanks again y'all for commenting and kudosing, it makes me shine bright like a diamond.

_ Three months _ , he repeated to himself with his face under water _. Tell them it’s been three months. Tell them you don’t know. Just tell them three months. _

The yank back up. His face hit air. Tony gasped for breath, water streaming down his face. The world reappeared, the world where instead of spending eternities wishing for air, his one wish became to stay alive long enough to get someone to pop his dislocated shoulder back into place. Dimly he knew there must be more to life than that, but at the present time, it was all he could remember ever wanting. ( _ Ever is three months. That’s the only unit of time, is three months; no matter how long it feels like, it’s always been three months... _ ). That, or maybe he wanted some really heavy duty painkillers. Preferably both.

“Where is he?!”

“I don’t  _ know _ !” Tony spat out with the water clogging his mouth, his throat, his lungs.

“Then remember!” The man behind him pushed his head forward again, and the oblong basin of cold, dark water in front of him became Tony’s blue-tinted sunglasses in  Paris last September during fashion week (Pepper had begged to go), became the windshield of his Ferrari at midnight on Sunset Drive, became the cobalt eyeslits on his Mach VI suit that had unexpectedly shorted out on a mission that time with Bruce, became the dirty bin of dishwater they had waterboarded him with in Afghanistan - everything kaleidoscoped before his eyes for a split second before the hand on the back of his head pushed his neck forward again, and the basin stopped being a hallucination of past memories, and became the situs wherein he was Currently Being Waterboarded.

Again.

Fuck. This is what his life always came back to somehow, wasn’t it? He’d managed to mostly avoid the routine, daily experience of torture for eight or nine years now - ( _ no, three months, all time is now three months _ ), but in the end, they had caught up to him again, Ten Rings or whoever the fuck it was this time. If he could have shook his head with ironic dismay, he would have, but there was still a hand on the back of his head, pressing him down, down, down into the cobalt… like last time, the time three months ago, when he’d been held in Afghanistan for what felt like eternity like this did, but what turned out to be only three months.  

Damn. He’d been doing so well, too… At least they didn’t have Yinsen to use against him anymore, but the constant sharp pain in Tony’s sternum was due to the pure fact that they  _ did _ have Rhodes, Rhodes who had been the first to find him after the last time, Rhodes who had stood at his side all this time, for so many years, for three whole months  — they had Rhodes here, somewhere, and the lack of knowledge of where and how and if he was, was almost the worst of the pain right now.

_ Now is nothing. If you’ve been here for three months, you’ll get out in three months. They’re idiots and you’re an asshole, genius — genius, asshole. You’ll figure something out, you son of a— _

“I don’t know,” he spluttered when they brought his head back up again, shivering. “I don’t know.” He clung to the words like a mantra. They were true. They were the only truth he knew, at the moment. His captors kept asking about things like the Avengers, and Barnes, and Bruce, and Steve, locations and time frames and but Tony had nothing to say except  _ “I don’t know _ .” He knew he did, in fact, know some things, but he was doing his college best to repress every single shred of knowledge he had ever acquired. The risk of babbling was way too high.

Someone kicked his bad shoulder, and Tony screamed and swore cobalt blue. Tears sprang to his eyes, went spilling down his cheeks, but since his entire upper body was already drenched, had been drenched for what felt like hours now ( _ it’s been three months, and I don’t know _ ), it wasn’t like anyone would notice.

“How long!” the someone yelled, kicking hard into the bottom of Tony’s ribcage, hard enough to make Tony think of a potato chip being smashed by a shoe. 

“It’s been! Three! Months!” he shouted back, voice catching on the undulating cough that never quite died anymore, the scratchiness buried deep  in the back of his throat. “I don’t  _ know _ !”

“This fucking nonsense again,” the interrogator complained to the man who was constantly bettering his grip on Tony’s hair, the better to force his neck down. “That’s all he ever says now!”

“Get Stane in here,” said the other voice, the blond jefe, the silk shirts and sunshades one, from the far corner of the room. “Goddammit," he said, sounding disgusted. "When are you gonna make this easier for everyone and just give up, huh, Stark?”

“In three months,” Tony said to the floor, pain still racing through his shoulder and ribs as he curled to his knees like he’d been told by men with guns that he had to do, not trusting himself to stay silent, because he had to answer, had  to say something to every single question they posed, or else he risked another round. 

“Another three months, huh? Sure you’ll last that long?”

“I.. don’t know,” he mumbled. There were days - moments - months - here where he was in so much fucking pain he didn’t know anything for sure, much less how to escape from this helhole, go out into the world, and start doing some good again.

“Ok. Three months. And then you’ll be ready to accept our terms?”

“I don’t know,” he sighed, really meaning it this time. 

The silk shirt crossed the tile on clicking soles. He smiled down at Tony, who could barely raise his heavy head to make eye contact.

“Another round, I think,” said the silk shirt. “Three more month’s worth. Then let Stane have him, see what he can do.”

_ Three more months _ . How long was three fucking months, though? Panic erupted in him, blind and burning. Tony had to say  _ no _ , before they reached the basin again, had to explain that the truth was  _ no _ , the truth was  _ no _ , the truth was  _ nothing, never, no _ , Cap never talked to him now, Cap want  _ nothing _ to do with him, that in fact, Tony had asked for help and Cap had said  _ no. _

But it was too late. They were already beginning again.

_ Three months… I don’t know. _


	9. All The Way Up

 

“Wait,” Bruce said, and Steve could almost hear the deep lines forming on the doctor’s brow. “How did he call you from a jail cell?”

“Hacked into their system, somehow,” Steve replied. “One of those things he does. I can have Widow play you the recording if you want.”

“No,” Bruce said a little hurriedly, as across the room, Natasha mouthed, “ _ No, no, no _ .”

Steve cringed slightly, realizing a little too late that he probably shouldn’t have said that last bit.

“...She’s there?” Bruce asked him after a brief pause.

“Everyone is,” Steve said, watching Natasha’s curls bounce as she shook her head vigoruosly. “Well, not everyone. But Natasha—No?” Steve broke off, reading what Natasha wanted, but refusing to lie to Bruce. “No, I mean she’s not here. Well, she crept in here about two minutes ago, I think, but she’s pretending she’s not in the room. But she is.”

There was a longer, pregnant pause as Bruce’s end of the line fed Steve static and Natasha’s eyes sent glowing, red-hot daggers at Steve’s nose.

“Nice knowing you, man,” Bruce said.

“I know she’s gonna kill me, but look, both of you,” Steve said, staring pleadingly into Natasha’s dangerous eyes, wishing he could be looking at Bruce’s always-gentle expression instead. “This is about T—Tony. I’m not sure what to do. Last time, I left him alone to solve his own problems, and he ended up pretty close to dead. A few times, actually. So I’m asking you: what do you think I should do?”

The burning heat faded very slowly from Natasha’s eyes, and the static on Bruce’s line increased. Steve kept his free hand on his knee, to keep it from bobbing up and down, which he’d noticed it doing a few times in the last few days. The sight still surprised him. He had never been given to fidgeting, but then again, he wasn’t usually given to indecision either.

A long, thoughtful sigh, finally echoed down from wherever the heck Bruce was right now. 

“Look, Captain,” he said, and Steve didn’t miss the military emphasis that the use of the term  _ Captain _ gave Bruce’s words. “I know Tony. Probably a little better than you do. The trouble is he loves making a mess, but he also likes, and here’s something most people don’t know about him, but he also enjoys cleaning up that mess. Or trying to. And he hates when other people try to do it for him. Take it from me, because I tried that often. So while I love and care for him and I don’t want to see him get hurt, at the same time, I don’t know. I trust him. I think he can get through this, Whatever’s happening. I know it kills you not to know where each member of your team is and how they are. It’s killing me too. But I’ve found a way to live with that for the last few years, since Sokovia. You gotta learn to live with it now. And trust him to do what he does best.”

“What he does best?” Steve chuckled mirthlessly. “Like what he did with Ultron?”

Natasha hummed her agreement and took a restless perch on the arm of the large couch, facing the floor-to-ceiling window. Steve hummed agreement back at her, but she didn’t look at him.

“What?” Bruce said on the phone, sounding disconcerted. “No. Ultron was… Not Tony’s fault. He was no one’s fault.” 

Steve had to bite down another bitter laugh. “What?”

“Ultron was definitely my fault, if anyone’s,” said Bruce with another sigh.

“ _ What _ ?”

“I could have foreseen—”

“Ultron was entirely Tony’s fault,” Steve argued, the words snapping out automatically.

“That isn’t true,” Bruce argued back, sounding just as peevish. “Ultron was mostly _my_ fault. I should have foreseen, and prevented —”

“ _ Tony’s _ the one who let his ego get ahead of him —”

“That isn’t true!” Bruce snapped harder than before, his voice scarily loud, even as Natasha sent a studious glance in Steve’s direction, slightly nodding her support of what Steve had just said. “The fault was mine,” Bruce reaffirmed. “Or if not mine, it was the your girl witch’s fault.”

“ _ What _ ?” Steve barked again, incensed, but not missing the venom in Bruce’s tone either. “Wanda? She might have been allied with Ultron, but she came around in the end— ”

“It isn’t the end I’m talking about. Didn’t you know about —” Bruce began more hotly, then broke off very sharply. Steve pictured Bruce’s exasperated,  _ Keep your lid on, Banner _ expression, which he’d seen so many times before, and again Steve ached to have this conversation take place in person. 

“Look,” Bruce began again in lower tone. “Why don’t you ask  _ her _ . If she’s as worthy of your trust as you seem to think she is, she’d tell you what happened.”

“I understand you’re upset,” Steve said. “But Wanda’s become a key part of our team. And you barely knew her.”

“Yeah, we met just that one time, when she got in my green head and fucked me up hard,” Bruce replied, anger still crystal clear, but now tamped down with his thick shield of bitter irony. “Remember how it was  _ Tony _ who stopped me from destroying several cities that afternoon?”

Steve kept his mouth closed, but allowed it to twitch from side to side. He hadn’t wanted to start this argument over again, didn’t want to relive the same argument he’d had with Tony, that afternoon in Berlin with the pens…  It had hurt Steve, hard, to walk out of that boardroom, leaving that expression on Tony’s face…. But Steve stood by what he’d said to Stark back then— and he stood by Wanda. He had too. Everyone else was so intent on seeing the worst in her. She had come around all on her own, though. In Sokovia, she had crossed over to their side, and in the end, it had made the difference in the battle… 

Steve couldn’t hold her past against her.  _ Everyone _ deserved a second chance. Wanda. Bucky. Bruce. Hell,  _ Tony _ . Hadn’t Steve given Tony  _ so many _ second chances? Hadn’t those second-chance opportunities backfired even more often than anyone else’s? 

Or was that Steve’s momentary anger coloring his view of things? He wished he could feel impartial, but just now, he very much doubted that was possible.

Which was exactly why he needed Bruce here. In person. Bruce, or someone like Bruce. Thor, or…  Or Buck. Someone who would call him on his mistakes before he made them. A counterbalance. Natasha was here, but icy and silent, and anyway, most of her opinions (like Sam’s and Clint’s) seemed to match Steve’s in the end anyway. 

“Bruce…” Steve said, mustering his courage. “Before you hang up… ” Steve trailed off, desperately wishing he knew how to angle this next request, wishing this task had fallen to Tony or Hawkeye or even Thor, all of whom seemed to have had an easier time gaining Banner’s trust than Steve had had. At least he was probably better than Natasha, who was still leaning on the couch arm, her back ramrod straight, like a cat on high alert.

Bruce gave a third long sigh. “I know what you want to ask, but the simple fact is, I can’t  _ trust _ myself to be anywhere near... events. Not when  _ she  _ is there, too. So you have to choose. Me or her. I’m not offended if you choose her. I’m good here. But you have to promise to keep her far away from my here.” 

Steve chewed the edge of his lower lip. “You talking about Wanda, or Natasha?”

“Wanda,” came the terse reply.

Steve ran his hand over his forehead again, avoiding looking at the increase of rigidity in Natasha’s stance.  _ What a stupid thing to say, Rogers,  _ he castigated himself, but the way Bruce had phrased it, Steve had been genuinely uncertain… 

“The truth is, I don’t even know where she is right now, Banner.”

“Then go find her,” he said. “Or at least keep very close tabs, Captain. Leave Tony to his game, and go find her. She’s dangerous.”

“We all are.”

There was a slight pause, and then a final, “Not like that,” before the connection ended and the line went dead.

Steve felt the flip-phone settle heavily back into his hand as his hand fell to his lap. Then he mustered his courage again and met Natasha’s icy glare.

“I apologize, Nat,” he said. “I know you two have your personal history. I needed his advice though.”

She shrugged emotionlessly and replied in clipped bullet points as she swung herself off the arm of the couch and strode back down the hall. “I accept. We don’t. You didn’t.”

Steve put his head back in his free hand.  _ Idiot. Now you’ve lost Nat’s trust, too. _

She paused just before disappearing into the shadows of the elevator that would take her down to street level and craned her neck back at him. “You needed mine,” she said bitingly.

“I still —” Steve began, but the doors slid shut, and Natasha’s stoic glare disappeared behind the metal doors

_ …Good one, Rogers. Well-played.  _

The voice in Steve’s head sounded uncannily like Tony’s, enough to put Steve’s teeth on edge. It sucked. This whole situation sucked, and he wasn’t sure why, but even after running through the whole thing with Bruce, it felt like it was  _ his _ fault. And  _ everyone’s _ . Wanda had disappeared. Scott had gone off the radar. T’Challa was back in Wakanda. God only knew where Vision was. Natasha had just left. And now he, Steve, was responsible for deciding who to save, or at least, who to save first: Bucky, Tony, or Rhodes. 

Bucky needed him most. If there was one thing Steve felt sure of, it was that when push came to shove, no one else would save Bucky.

Unless Tony was serious when he’d said  _ he _ would.

But Tony might be lying. Tony might actually need saving himself.

And yet Tony had asked him, almost demanded that Steve save Rhodes. Rhodes, who had sacrificed so much already… 

Steve turned away from the hot lurch of guilt that that thought induced, pacing back to the kitchen. He’d been over this so many times in his head. But it wasn’t  _ just  _ his own fault. Rhodes had chosen to fly that mission. At Tony’s urging, no doubt, but it was Rhodes’s choice. And Vision’s mistake.

Steve couldn’t get the image of the man in the Iron Patriot suit mouthing the Winter Soldier code at Bucky out of his head. It wasn’t just  _ his  _ own fault, he repeated to himself. It was Sam and the others who had gone behind his back to bring Bucky out of cryo, where at least Bucky had been  _ safe _ . Steve had equal parts gratitude and rage at them for this act. It would have been more heavily tilted towards gratitude, if the very first thing that had happened to his best friend hadn’t been capture and attempted forced servitude… 

What if another mistake was made? Had already  _ been _ made, while Steve waited here, unable to sort out what to do? What if instead of paralysis, it was death, this time? How was he going to live with himself?

Steve didn’t realize he’d broken the tacky red  _ Virginia is for Lovers _ mug in his hand, that he’d spilled coffee all over the granite countertop, that he was even  _ making _ coffee at all until he moved to wipe the wetness from his eyes with the back of his hand and realized there was a streak of red blood mixing with his sudden tears. 

He shook the ceramic into the garbage, trying to laugh at himself. 

Apparently he was a little stressed out.

He didn’t even have the shield. That had been the worst of it yesterday, in their ghastly fight in Midtown. It was like he’d been —  _ missing an arm _ , his mind supplied, as his unconscious flashed him the unwelcome memory of Stark pulling Bucky’s metal limb from his body. 

God. Bruce had been no help. 

But then, he didn’t know. No one knew about that day, except for Steve, Tony, and Bucky. T’Challa knew the aftermath. But as far as Steve could tell, none of them had said anything about it to anyone…

Steve startled so hard he crushed his second mug. This time, he paid no attention to the shards or the blood, because a riveting thought had just entered his head—

They weren’t the only ones who knew.

Zemo knew.

Of  _ course _ Zemo knew. 

And if there was one person of those who knew who would be using that knowledge to engineer some sort of divisive, gruesome, and manipulative revenge plot, it was probably the one who already had a track record of just that.

“Clint,” Steve boomed ten seconds later, letting himself into the bedroom where they were both curled into a couple Stark’s goosedown gray pillows. “Sam?”

“Ugh,” Clint said. 

“Early,” Sam said.

“Get up,” said Steve, feeling the weight he’d been carrying for hours, days, finally disengage, to be replaced by the old, familiar, oh-so-welcome certainty. He finally knew what to do. “We’re going to Berlin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry you guys for the off-kilter ooc and lack of continuity, my bad my bad. I hate when authors do what i’m doing but… like i gotta rush through this in order to process all my tender avengers emotions before stb comes out. no joke.


	10. Ain't No Sunshine

The Winter Soldier would be much more useful in this sort of situation. James Buchanan Barnes thought to himself, with a rueful half-smile.  For one thing, the Winter Soldier never allowed himself the luxury of a facial expression, never mind a rueful half-smile.

“Is that a yes, then, Soldier?” said the tall, imposing, bald man currently standing across the hall. 

“I accept the mission,” Bucky intoned, and the man dropped his hands from his hips and wiped his palms together.

“Good,” he said thoughtfully, eyes flickering to the cell door where Bucky’s ‘target’ was confined. “Very good.” 

“But I require clarification,” Bucky said, still toneless. 

“Go ahead,” said the other man, his tone jovial and warm on the surface and full of spite and hatred underneath. Rather like Alexander Pierce’s tone had often been like. From what Bucky remembered from that dream-like period when he’d been in Pierce’s employment, anyway, and from the nightmares that haunted him still.

Bucky took a silent breath to steady his voice, then said, “I will need to be briefed on the target’s emotional history. I will need full access to information from his personal files. The protocols conducted by the Red Room relied upon the use of these kind of  sentimental triggers, and the full program cannot take root without—”

“I know,” the bald man interrupted him. “I have already granted you access. It’s already on your keycode.” He moved closer, well into Bucky’s personal space, and it took all Bucky’s years of steely-eyed training not to bat an eyelid. “Just promise me you won’t compromise our efforts here by… getting attached. Hm?”

Bucky allowed himself a very slightly quizzical expression in response. Winter Soldiers never got attached to anything. Attachment was the first thing beaten out of them by the Red Room. Which he knew that Obadiah Stane knew very well. 

“After all,” said Stane with a vaguely leering smile. “Your buddy, your old Captain, the liar and traitor you once called friend? He’s in quite a few of those files. And you yourself feature prominently in one or two crucial episodes. There may be…. some  _ sentimental triggers _ in store for you as well.”

Bucky stayed still. He didn’t even swallow, though if he’d been in tenth grade still, he would have gulped so loud Hannah Steiner in the front row would have turned around to shush him. It had been a very long time since Hannah Steiner had made him blush, but since he was still Bucky, he still remembered.

If he wanted to make sure that he  _ stayed  _ Bucky, he’d have to convince Stane that he didn’t.

“Understood,” said the Winter Soldier in him. “It poses no threat to the mission, however.”

Stane chuckled slightly, clapped him on the back, and gave him a very charismatic grin. “I know it doesn’t.”

Bucky waited until Stane had turned away, until he was all the way down the hall, before allowing himself to swallow. He turned to face the door of the cell that contained the man whose parents the Winter Soldier had murdered, the man who had nearly murdered him and Steve that day in Siberia, the man who he was supposed to now put through the living hell that was the Red Room’s Winter Soldier Protocol. 

He swallowed once, then felt his mouth twitch into a quarter of a rueful smile.

It had already been an interesting day for James Buchanan Barnes. He’d flown to New York City, gotten himself in a fight, gotten kidnapped, and had some rather nasty people attempt to brainwash him in a rather nasty way,  He had no doubt it was about to get a lot more interesting. 

At least the Winter Soldier, useful as he might have been, wasn’t around to appreciate it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @ Lettie_Hamlet, HARDCORE AGREE, and please stay posted. Wanda's comeuppance is comin, my friend.


	11. Swept Away

Bruce slowed then stopped his motorcycle, swung his leg over the seat, took four steps, and felt his stomach lurch. 

He set his sturdy brown backpack down with a plop and studied the charred lawn. Looked like he wasn’t the only one who’d decided to come home.

Not that the Avengers complex in upstate New York had ever been his home. The thought of the way things had ended after Ultron still made him feel slightly sick. Either that, or immensely nauseated, depending on which part of it he thought about first, which face flashed into his mind like a car swerving into his lane. 

Natasha, shutting down his offer of running away, because for her, the mission would always come first. That was slightly sick, just a small punch to the gut. He could live with it. It was her choice, and they had always been a very long shot.

Ultron, who was in part Bruce’s own creation, singing at them from across a field of devastation. That one packed a whammy. All those faces down below, staring up at him and Ultron in horror, wondering who was really worse, wondering  if, like in Africa, the next monster to crush would be the Hulk himself… 

The Witch. Wanda. Contorting her fingers, sending sick visions into his mind, visions that could cause  _ so much _ collateral damage, didn’t she understand? How could she  _ not  _ understand? And how could everyone who had accepted her onto their team fail to understand what Ultron had grokked instinctively? That she wasn’t just a teammate, she was a  _ weapon _ —one that created  _ more _ weapons. It hadn’t just happened to Bruce, either. Tony had sat on a stump at Clint’s farmhouse with a lost, haunted, sickened look in his brown eyes, one that Bruce recognized from staring into his own eyes in the mirror. And when Bruce had crossed Clint’s front lawn and asked, Tony had blinked just once before he opened right up. Told Bruce that he’d figured out why he’d had to create their “robot son,” said that though the fault was his ( _ theirs _ , Bruce had corrected, quipping that he had as much parental rights as Tony did), the grandmother of Ultron was in fact Ultron’s current co-conspirator, the red witch, the one with magic fingers… Tony had figured it all out as soon as he’d seen her magic in action… on  _ Bruce… _ And yet Tony had still accepted Cap’s decision to include her on the team. Tony had accepted her, helped her — just as he had helped General Ross, with the Sokovia Accords…  

And that led Bruce’s spinning mind back to the flashing faces his teammates. His friends — or his former friends anyway. That thought was the one that caused the real churn. Because he had been so sure he had also seen that horror in _their_ eyes, several times. After the battle had ended, after Bruce had become Bruce again, as the quinjet rocketed away from the chaos, he had told himself it was all in the Hulk’s imagination. That Cap, Tony, Clint, Thor—and Natasha—that all of them saw him for _him_ , and not just as a weapon, not just as a mad scientist, not just as another monster to bring in. He’d told himself that thousands of times, in their years together…

But it didn’t stop the doubts from creeping in that night, as he’d circled Antarctica in the quinjet, trying to lull himself to sleep. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were all just waiting for him to erupt again, to go mad, like Ultron had… the nauseated part of him was sure that even if they didn’t feel that way, they  _ should. _

So he had left. He’d abandoned them. It was the most sickening thought of all, except for the inevitable follow-up his restless mind always supplied: that they had abandoned him, too.

Not entirely, though. Apparently. Somehow Steve had found his number. Called his home phone while Bruce was tending his garden in the outskirts of a rural village an hour outside of Kyoto. He’d been sickened and overjoyed as soon as he’d heard Steve’s voice on the phone. They had kept tabs after all. He was pretty sure that was down to either Tony’s or Natasha’s efforts, not Steve’s, Bruce’s gut told him it was Tony and Natasha’s combined efforts, the silent extended outreach of the two members of the team he’d been closest with… And their spying on him—keeping tabs on him— it was either the warm hand of concerned friends, or the hot caress of asset containment. It saddened and sickened him that he couldn’t rule out either interpretation yet. 

So what that they had tracked him? It wasn’t like they had actually come after him… which was either because they were respecting his need for space… or because they just didn’t care about him as much as he’d thought they would…. 

He took several calming breaths in through his nostrils, just in case his thoughts led him to a bad, green place, Then he proceeded to examine the Thor-print on the lawn, scuffing at the edge of it with his boots. Bruce was glad the print was there; he hadn’t realized he’d missed the redcape until now. 

Thor was straightforward, which Bruce appreciated. Thor obviously thought of Bruce as a friend and the Hulk as a rival. A sometimes-friendly rival, but a rival all the same. Oddly enough, it had always set Bruce’s mind at ease, knowing that with Thor around, Bruce’s other half hopefully would get a hammer to the noggin if anything went wrong. Thor was the only one who could really make sure Bruce would never wake up responsible for the brutal murder of everyone else on the team. Veronica had helped with that worry too, of course. But sometimes, in his less charitable moments, at four am in the lab when they really  _ all s _ hould have been in bed long ago, Bruce had felt that perhaps all Veronica really was for Tony was a chance to show off.

The guilt, anger, and justification that this thought evoked in him made Bruce yank his backpack onto his back and stride across the lawn towards the security door, where anyone who was home would have already have seen him. 

No one had come out to meet him, though…

Obviously Tony wasn’t there. Being in captivity in an undisclosed location and all. Cap wouldn’t be there. Bruce had done his best to imply that Cap shouldn’t expect him. But it seemed like  _ someone  _ ought to be there, just to keep an eye on things…

The door slid open for him before he even reached over for the keypad. Bruce glanced at the beady-eyed security camera and gave a small nod, and an Irish, female voice activated.

“Welcome home, Doctor Banner,” said FRIDAY.

“I see you’re feeling better since your unfortunately-timed black-out this weekend,” he said as he dropped his backpack in the hall, studying his surroundings. The interior of the complex was exactly what he had imagined when he’d heard that Tony Stark had designed an Avengers training complex. “Where’s Thor?”

“Left an hour and four days ago,” replied the A.I.

“Huh. No one else is here?” he asked FRIDAY.

“Nadie,” she replied in Spanish, the first syllable making his heart clench. Wondering if Tony’s AI was purposely trolling him, he hurried down the hall to the kitchen, where FRIDAY had already turned on the espresso machine for him. He flattened the ground espresso and pressed the button for a double shot, even though it was nearly 8pm and he hated trying to sleep with caffeine in his system. He somehow felt he’d end up with more than just these two shots before he made it to bed tonight. Or tomorrow. Whenever he could catch some rest.

“Like a damsel in distress, I’m prone to fainting when it’s least convenient, Boss says, But at least I’m very pretty.”

“No further word from Tony just yet, then?” Bruce asked, sipping the perfect, bitter brew.

“Not since you and Rogers last talked,” FRIDAY replied, and Bruce didn’t miss the acidity in her tone when she said the surname. “He’s doing some damseling himself, apparently.”

“Can you tell me what happened between them?” he asked, sinking into the nearest couch, which was a sort of burnt-orange color that reminded Bruce of the 1970s. FRIDAY was alright, but Bruce had barely interacted with her before leaving. He was still missing Jarvis and trying to tell himself not to. Jarvis would have told him more or less the truth, insofar as his protocols allowed, whereas Bruce felt like FRIDAY was intent on playing games with him, with everyone. He tried to tell himself he was being paranoid, but with Tony Stark at the helm, you never could tell. 

“I can’t,” said FRIDAY bluntly. 

“You can’t or you won’t?” 

“Both.”

“Great,” said Bruce acerbically, mussing his hair with one hand. Speaking of games…

“But I  _ can  _ tell you what’s happening on Channel Four news, at this very moment.”

The flat-screen TV across the room burned awake, and Bruce immediately turned his eyes away and said, “Turn it off. Just give me the summary.”

He could only just barely admit to himself that he might lose control if he saw something upsetting. Even after all this time, the beast was still always  _ right _ there, ready to flare up inside, erupt…. 

“Fine,” pouted FRIDAY, shutting the TV off. “Spoilsport. Rhodey’s been arrested for violating the Accords.”

Bruce leaned back in the couch, glad he hadn’t risked watching anything. “What the fuck….“ he trailed off, borrowing the phrase that he knew Tony would have said, if he were here.

“My analysis indicates Ross is most likely holding him in a maximum-security prison, most likely in something like the underwater raft where he held the other members of the team while they were on…  obligatory probation.”

“Is that what we’re calling it now,” said Bruce, his fingers clenching on the name ‘Ross.’  _ Don’t think about him right now. Don’t think about him, or Betty, or back then—  _

That was when Natasha appeared in the doorway opposite. Her hair was wet from a shower, she wore no makeup, and she was wearing the least-Natasha outfit Bruce had ever seen her in: oversized sweats and a loose tank top. 

She took one look at him and said only one word, a very crisp, very low, very even, “Hello.”

“FRIDAY,” Bruce said, not looking away from Natasha, too afraid she’d see it as weakness if he did, “I thought you said no one was home.”

“I said Nadie was home,” said the Irish voice. “Nadie being a female name common in Russia and parts of Latvia, as well as being the first name for one of the aliases commonly employed by Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a. Black Widow.”

“You are trolling me,” Bruce muttered, disgruntled. He set his espresso mug down and slowly stood up, searching desperately for words, small talk or big talk or any sort of talk, and coming up empty— 

“Bruce,” said Natasha; she had crossed the room silently, had stopped only a few feet away. “I’m—”

Her voice broke. She swallowed and looked up at him once, just long enough for Bruce to become immensely alarmed at the sight of silvery tear-tracks on her slightly pink cheeks, before she fell into his chest, throwing her arms around him, pressing her face against his shirt.

Bruce’s eyes bugged out. Was this a con? Was she acting?

“I’m worried,” she whispered. “I’m really worried.”

“Hey,” he said quietly, wrapping his arms around her, and wow, did it feel good to  _ hold _ someone again, to be held by someone, after so long alone. “It’ll be okay.”

“No, You don’t understand. I made a mistake.”

She leaned in even closer, leaning against him. Bruce was so confused. For all their….  _ flirtation _ , he had never really seen Natasha… vulnerable. If that was even what she was right now. Only that one time, at Clint’s. This was almost like that—except for the fact that the wetness on his shirt wasn’t just from her hair; it wasn’t in the right place for that. She was crying. Actually she was trembling, too… was it possible? Was Natasha Romanoff actually…  _ scared _ ?

“It’s okay,” he said again, pressing his chin into her hair as his mind raced through possibility after possibility, hating that he had to do this, hating that he no longer knew her enough to even half-trust her. 

“Bruce,” she murmured, her voice still low, but no longer close to even. “I’m sorry. I feel so… sick. I made a horrible mistake.”

He held her there for an eternity of uncertainty, something like two or three seconds, most likely, before FRIDAY’s sardonic, unwelcome comment reached them: 

“She’s telling the truth, you know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI. Not a Bruce/Nat fic btw, or at least not my intent to make it one just yet. But I didn't want to just dis-include Age of Ultron, because, like, it happened? In the MCU canon at least. Also not tryna throw hella hate on Wanda but like..... fo real girl, stop tryna get away with mind-controlling other people, it's kind of an ugly character trait? 
> 
> Can anyone recommend me a fic that's like a re-write of AoU, where all the frustrating, problematic parts of that movie become beautiful butterflies and fly away? Know what I'm saying?
> 
> <3 thanks for kudos and comments dudes <3


	12. Everything You Want

 

There was a Thor-scar the size of a truck on the lawn when she arrived and a letter on the table, written with flowing blue script, which was how Natasha knew things were going more or less according to plan. Thor had a surprisingly gentle hold on the pen, for such a large-fingered man, Natasha thought.

 

_ My friends, _

_ I come back to your realm today in order to entreat the aid of our fair and kindly maiden-warrior, Wanda Maximoff. I require her aid in Asgard, as I have discovered that my brother Loki has once again become a threat to my kingdom. No other besides Wanda can equal Loki in magical skill, save it be for the one called Vision, who has volunteered to accompany us both on this endeavour. I surmise that he intends to protect her from any harm that might befall. Be assured that I will also do my utmost to ensure her safe return, if she should be unable to protect herself, which I have been informed is an unlikely outcome. :) _

 

(He had inscribed an actual side-smiley emoji, which Natasha found somehow a bit disturbing, although it made her smile in spite of herself).

 

_ I trust that all is well in the City of New York. I attempted to place a call to the Tower of Stark, but found that the phone bill here had not been paid in some time. I trust this is a mere oversight and Friend Tony Stark has not run out of gold in his treasury. If he has, be assured I will bring from the treasurehouses of Asgard whatever is required.  _

 

_ Your companion in battle, and devoted friend, _

_ Thor _

 

It was all rather sweet. Sentimental.

Natasha was manifestly not the sentimental type.

She was the checklist type. She ran through her latest in her head (where she kept all of her checklists) one more time, even though she knew it was flawless already.

Steve off to Europe check. 

Wanda off-planet: check.

Bruce back in the fold: check.

That had been the biggest, iffiest if of them all, second only to Tony Stark coming out of this affair with mental and physical health intact (which was always iffy, in the most generic and classic ways possible). Bruce was key here. She would have to play this very carefully, in order to keep from scaring him off. If he left, they were in every possible way screwed. He had to be here, with them. Or else they were all probably going to die.

He had to feel invested, too, though. And the only way she could think to do that was by riffing on their old, half-second-long “romance.” The amount of shit she was going to take from Hawkeye for this later  _ almost  _ slowed her down as she emerged from the shower and arranged her makeup  one more time, crocodile tears poised to cascade. She heard FRIDAY chatting with Bruce as she slipped lotion onto her limbs, and the sound of both their voices set off a strange, unwelcome, greyish feeling in her. Nostalgia, possibly; she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt it before, but she’d heard it described. She’d have thought perhaps it was guilt for what she was about to do, except she wasn’t the guilt-feeling type. Of course it was unfair to Bruce. He deserved honesty. But very rarely did anyone get what they truly deserved, in this life. 

No, she had to weep, like the love interest he thought she thought she was. She would have to manipulate this very good man, because of his very dark secret, because she was the only person on their team currently who could possibly match his darkness. 

As they embraced, as she quite literally  _ fell into his arms _ , flinching just slightly at her own proximity to human flesh, the thought that had been relegated to a lower, optional sub-box in the decision tree of her checklist for this operation recurred: that she wasn’t the  _ only _ person. If Tony were there, he’d go mano a mano with her and Bruce for darkness any day. Didn’t matter that half his darkness seemed to be self-inflicted. He just always wanted to be part of the gang. And Natasha had allowed him to, before, when it suited her purpose…

That was when FRIDAY decided to turn on the TV.

Tony Stark’s bruised, bloodied face flashed into Natasha’s line of sight. 

And she instantly regretted not checking that sub-box when she’d had the chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry you guys, this is a filler chapter, but I needed to put up the other half of this interaction and OMMMMG i think after this one I can finally launch the Operation Rescue Tony Stark mission I've been wanting to launch for the past uh ten chapters?? But thanks for hanging in there, now everything is in place, and it's time for some Emotional Reconciliation! 
> 
> I might move the next section over to a new fic in a series? Keep your eyes peeled! Thanks for comments!!


	13. Author Note

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OKAY SORRY

Huge apologies for leaving this bigass fic unfinished and derelict for ages. I'm going to try to re-write portions of it/ repost things in a series, which can be read contiguously, or not. Stay in touch. I'll be with you shortly, but just in case you're wondering, YES there is a masterplan, and NO I'm not going to tell you what it is yet.


End file.
